South Beach. 43 



they regard as its unpleasantries, the merits ot the schoon- 

 ers, the captains and such matters. Above all do they 

 discuss the purchasing power of the five dollars they are 

 about to receive, when applied to the market value of beer 

 and whiskey. A flaxen-haired giant of this description, 

 who might have played with us as Otus or Ephialtes, for 

 his muscles stood out large and strong, stood on the beach 

 one day and lamented, in terms that would fill this page 

 with dashes, the fact that he was minus all cash. A good 

 specimen of anything — a resplendent flower, or even a big 

 toad — is pleasant to gaze upon, and so this muscular youth, 

 with his vivacious glances and rollicking ways, was a vig- 

 orous scion of the race, and admirable for his hardihood. 



Such characters, no doubt, were the buccaneers of old 

 days, who sailed the sea about the Point and landed on the 

 shore, and who, it is said, buried money on the banks of 

 Bass Creek. Perhaps even the burly, copper nosed Yan 

 Yost Vanderscamp and his roistering followers from the 

 " Wild Goose," at Communipaw, landed on this strand. 



About eighteen hundred and twenty or thirty, men 

 came for several successive years at Christmas time, and 

 taking sight from a rock exposed at low-water, dug a long 

 trench, and it is believed that they finally found the treas- 

 ure, for remnants of tarred canvas and pieces of an old 

 box were discovered in the trench which they had dug. 



Crooke's Point was formerly known as Brown's Point, 

 and on the old map of the island, already referred to, it is 

 denominated a " Beach of Sand." Bass Creek is laid 

 down on this and subsequent maps as of considerable pro- 

 portions, but now only vestiges of it remain, it being nearly 



