kidd's money. 499 
Delaware and Schuylkill rivers," says Mr. Watson, in his 
amusing Annals of Philadelphia, " that the pirates of Black- 
beard's day had deposited treasure in the earth. The con- 
ceit was, that sometimes they killed a prisoner and interred 
him with it, to make his ghost keep his vigils there as a 
guard ' walking his weary round.' Hence it w^as not rare 
to hear of persons having seen a shpook or ghost, or of hav- 
ing dreamed of it a plurality of times ; thus creating a suffi- 
cient incentive to dig on the spot. 
' Dream after dream ensues ; 
' And still ihey dream that they shall still succeed, 
' And still are disappointed !' 
" Colonel Thomas Forrest, who died in 1828, at the age of 
83, had been in his early days a youth of much frolic and fun, 
always well disposed to give time and application to forward 
a joke. He found much to amuse himself in the credulity of 
some of the German families. I have heard him relate some 
of his anecdotes of the prestigious kind with much humor. 
When he was about twenty-one years of age, a tailor who w^as 
measuring him for a suit of clothes, happened to say, " Now, - 
Thomas, if you and I could only find some of the money of the 
sea-robbers, (the pirates,) we might drive our coach for life.'*' 
The sincerity and simplicity w^ith which he uttered this, 
caught the attention of young Forrest, and when he went 
home he began to devise some scheme to be amused with his 
credulity and superstition. There was a prevailing belief that 
the pirates had hidden many sums of money and much trea- 
sure about the banks of the Delaware. Forres-t got an old 
parchment, on which he wrote the dying testimony of one 
John Hendricks, executed at Tyburn jfor piracy, in which he 
stated he had deposited a chest and a pot of money at C(>op- 
er's Point, in the Jerseys. This parchment he smoked, and 
gave to it the appearance of antiquity ; calling on his German 
tailor, told him he had found it among his father's papers, who 
got it in England from the prisoner, whom he visited in pri- 
son. This he showed to the tailor as a precious paper, which 
he could by no means lend out of his hands. This operated 
the desired effect. 
" Soon after the tailor called on Forrest with one Ambrus- 
ter, a printer, whom he introduced as capable of ' printing 
any spirit out of hell ' by his knowledge of the black art. J-Je 
asked to show him the parchment; he was delighted with'it, 
and confidently said he could conjure Hendricks to give up 
