A. JE. Verrill — The Bermuda Islands. 613 



In the depositions, the Rev. Sampson Bond,* a clergyman who 

 arrived in Bermuda in 1663, and lived there up to 1689, or later, 

 was said to have been one of the persons to whom these Spanish 

 stories had been told, while he was a prisoner of war at Groine. 

 According to the tradition, the shipwrecked crew, after burying 

 their treasure, built a vessel of cedar at Spanish Point, in which they 

 escaped. But the traditions do not suggest any reasons why they 

 should not have taken their treasures with them, if they had any to 

 take. Whether the name of "Spanish Point" was derived from 

 this tradition I do "not know, but it is not unlikely. This name 

 appeared on Norwood's map of 1622. Cross Island was evidently 

 thus named from the cross found there. 



Possibly such treasures may have been buried temporarily by the 

 officers for safe keeping, while the vessel was building, and then 

 carried away, though it might have been pui'posely left by dishonest 

 officers who hoped to return for it later, on their own account. 



As Ireland Islandf was pretty much all dug up and its surface 

 entirely altered many years ago, in building the navy yard and other 

 public w r orks there, buried treasures, if any existed at that time, 

 might have been found by those engaged in that work. If so, there 

 is no record of it, so far as appears. On the other hand, low places 

 were filled up to level the land, so that anything buried in hollows 

 would not have been found. Had treasures been buried, as im- 

 agined, it does not follow that one of the arms of the cross would 

 point to the spot, nor that it would have been put in a marked 

 triangle. That would have been too simple a device for the cunning 

 Spaniards to use. Such marks might have been intended only for 

 the identification of the particular Yellow-wood tree, selected as a 

 landmark, for some special purpose, in case the tree itself should be 

 destroyed, or not be easily distinguishable from others.J 



* The Rev. Sampson Bond was banished from Bermuda in 1670, but was rein- 

 stated by the London Company and allowed to return in 1672. The vessel in 

 which he took passage seems to have been the one captured by the Dutch, when 

 the prisoners were taken to " Groine," a Spanish town. He arrived in Bermuda, 

 via New England, in 1674. He was preaching in 1689, and perhaps later. 



f [ have found no historical reason for the name of Ireland Island. It may 

 perhaps have been so called from its green verdure, and its position, across the 

 channel from the early settlement at Spanish Point and that vicinity. It was 

 sometimes called Long Point, in early times. It could not well have been named 

 from its inhabitants, because Irishmen were generally banished at once from 

 the islands, by the early settlers. 



\ The locality of buried treasures, for instance, might have been privately 

 recorded by means of a line laid out by compass, running a certain number of 



