615 A. E. Verrill—The Bermuda Islands. 208 
the Flying Dutchman), where no real ships could sail for the shallow- 
ness of the water. 
Others swore that when they tried to go to Ireland Island in boats 
to look for treasure they always encountered adverse winds and 
squalls, so that they could not land. Even the half-wild hogs were 
accused of being in league with the demons to drive intruders away. 
One testified that when he tried to dig there he was “ possest with a 
panick ffeare, unwilling to make any ffurther prograce in serching 
or digging.” This was very likely the case with others who were 
less frank in their testimony. 
One party were convinced that they would be struck blind, tem- 
porarily, in case they should find the treasure, and so quit digging, 
saying “they would not trust the Devil with their eyesight,” even 
temporarily. nf 
Some of these deponents also repeated the tradition that the two 
Spanish ships that were attacked and driven off from Castle Island 
by Governor Moore, in 1612, had come here to find and take away 
the buried treasures. 
Governer Butler, himself, in 1619, alluded to these legends of 
buried treasures, and to these ships as possibly coming to seek it, 
but he said there had been “divers greedy searches” for it even 
before then. 
He, however, thought that there was evidence that Spaniards had 
been here: “ Witnesse certaine crosses left erected upon rocks and 
promontories.* Some peeces of their coyne found scattered under 
trees, and the like signs of their being here. Upon which grounds, 
joyned with some intelligences (as they saye) out of Spayne itselfe, a 
report hath bin raysed of a great treasure, that should be hidd 
therabouts, which hath caused divers greedy searches ; which all of 
them hitherto have proved vaine and effect-lesse.” 
Some of the depositions of 1693, which are of certain historical 
value, are as follows :— 
“ The Deposition of Mr. John Keeling of Somerset Tribe, aged 
71 years, being sworne saith:—That about ffifty years since this 
* Possibly one of the crosses that he here refers to was the one sculptured 
on the ‘‘Spanish Rock,” with the date 1543 still legible, but he may also refer 
to the wooden one on Cross Island, which could hardly have lasted more than 
thirty or forty years, in that situation. 
As Governor Butler understood the Spanish language, and probably Latin 
also, it is singular that he did not translate and record the inscriptions on the 
‘‘prass tablets,” had they been known to him. Probably they were discovered 
after he left the islands. 
