LOST GOLD TOSSED UP BY THE TIDES

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 145, 20 June 1936, Page 29

LOST GOLD TOSSED UP BY THE TIDES

From a stretch of rough water just oft a point on the coast of Ecuador lost Spanish treasure is being recovered. Not, however, by man's efforts —for attempts at salvaging have been fruitless-r-but by freakish action of the sea (says the "New York Times"). Once in a while a tide will fling gold and , silver coins upon the narrow beach just below the promontory where the great beam of Santa Elena light keeps vigiL Legend is that many treasure ships have been lost off this point. But this well-named Angry Sea has confessed only to having swallowed the ship Leocadia in 1800 as indicated by the date, 1798, on the recovered gold. These "patacones" are as bright as new; but the silver has been battered into shapelessness and the impression is indecipherable.. To devotees of the simple life the peninsula of Santa Elena offers, an Elen-like existence. This iJesart -is fsr enough from the madding crowd; arid in spite of its proximity to the Equator it has a climate that Invigorates. due to the cold Humboldt current which skirts the shore. The native fisherfolk sense mysterious changes in the sea, and know when to leave their nets and wander from the protected south-eastern shore to. the rugged north-western side about a rhile away. There they plough up the sand with their toes in search

of coins. If they find some, it is taken as a sign of a larger harvest on later tides. * Secretive as the fishermen try to be about the "treasure tide" when it begins to run, the news leaks out. At once the whole lowland dreams of riches Vehicles of many sorts, filled with happy-go-lucky gold hunters, begin to bounce over the rough roads, all bound for the beach. And because a popular superstition invests the recovered coins with the virtue of attracting wealth, they are sold as fetishes for many times their metal value. Such "treasure tides" are few and far between, to be sure. Two in a year have been known to occur. While the amount of the findings is nothing sensational, to the primitive natives (bronzed replicas of the British salts who made the point their supply basfe in old whaling days) it affords a brief blissful taste of their idea of paradise. . The native's idea of paradise includes plenty of rice, green plantains, and a hammock so slung that he can lazily point out the coloured patches on the water where schools of fish he is not obliged to catch are disporting themselves For not until the last of the recovered coins is gone will one of the fishermen stir; and netmending is the first , sad sign that the flush days are ending.