A. E. Verrill — The Bermuda Islands. 611 



plate and a cross nailed to it. It is a great pity tbat these tablets 

 were not preserved. Probably the inscriptions were in Latin or 

 Spanish, or botb, which could not then be translated by the finders. 

 They might have given valuable information as to the early dis- 

 covery of the islands and of unrecorded shipwrecks there. As the 

 marks and tablets were described as nearly identical at both ends of 

 the islands, they were probably placed by the same party. Had 

 t\\e\ been attached to the trees when the islands were first discovered, 

 over a hundred years earlier, they would have been overgrown by 

 the wood or destroyed by the weather, for the saltness of the air 

 would soon corrode brass so as to render the inscriptions illegible. 

 Very likely they had been placed on the trees not long before 1600. 



That such marked Yellow-wood trees did actually exist there, up 

 to about 1630 or 1640, cannot be doubted, from the abundant testi- 

 mony of the witnesses. 



Some of the depositions were made b}^ men prominent in the 

 colony, including Richard Stafford, ex-chief judge ; William Keel- 

 ing and William Seymour, justices of the peace ; Capt. Jonathan 

 Stoakes, and several others. 



The inscribed brass tablets on the trees Avere, however, more 

 likely to have been memorial tablets, recounting the adventures of 

 the party and claiming the ownership of the islands by right of dis- 

 covery. Such notices were commonly erected on newly discovered 

 islands in those days. Possibly these tablets were left by the 

 Spanish crew of the Bonaventura, wrecked with Henry May, in 

 1693, or by a French crew, known to have been wrecked there a 

 number of years earlier. But there were, no doubt, many other 

 Bermuda wrecks, not recorded in history. 



Governor Gates, when his party left Bermuda in 1610, caused a 

 similar engraved memorial tablet, made of copper, to be nailed to a 

 " mightie cedar " at St. George's, with a cross, and the effigy of the 

 king of England, in the shape of a coin. This tablet gave the main 

 facts of the shipwreck and escape, with the dates and the names of 

 the commanders. It was inscribed both in English and in Latin, 

 and the cross was made of some of the oak timber of the ship. 

 (See p. 542.) 



For our immediate purpose, these depositions are of interest as 

 showing that at about 1650 large Yellow-wood trees grew both on 

 Ireland Island and Cooper's Island. Moreover, the great density of 

 the wood is shown by the testimony. Two of the deponents stated 

 that the marked large Yellow-wood tree on Cooper's Island was cut 



