613 A. EF. Verrill—The Bermuda Islands. 201 
In the depositions, the Rey. 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 purposely left by dishonest 
officers who hoped to return for it later, on their own account. 
As Ireland Islandt was pretty much all dug up and its surface 
entirely altered many years ago, in building the navy yard and other 
public works 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. 
* 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. 
+ I 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 
