BURIED TREASURE

Taranaki Daily News, 22 December 1931, Page 3

BURIED TREASURE

A SLOVAKIAN SEARCH. ' : . GYPSY FRAUDS. Czecho-Slovakia’s latest craze is the — treasure hunt—not the modern variety i with motor-cars, pretty partners, and pocket flasks; but the good old-fash-ioned digging for the buried treasure of robber chieftains, says the New Y’ork i' Times. The excitement began near Pistyan Spa, where a wealthy American woman who had read of the hidden treasures of the Slovak robber captain, Janosik, financed excavations which after some weeks yielded a few human i - bones, probably those of Turkish janissaries. Although the treasure hunter went unrewarded, it proved good business for the local peasants, who were ready to dig as lon<r as anyone would pay, and soon crinkled yellow parchments covered with plans resembling those of Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” were brought to light wherever there was a Turkish burial hill or ruined chapel furnished with the appropriate legend by the village go&sips, provided there was some well-to-do stranger in the neighbourhood. .

In the midst of the treasure-hunting excitement, a Gypsy named Ladislas Szarkozy came one day to a prosperous Bratislava merchant for whom he had done a few odd jobs, bemoaning the world crisis, and muttering darkly: “If I could lay my hands on a little capital, I could be as rich as Croesus.” Reluctantly he confessed that he knew the hiding place of the huge- treasure of Brigadier Ooskay, a French corporal under Louis XIV., who had made a fortune fighting with the Hungarian leader Hakoczy, had betrayed him, been cap,tured and executed without ever revealing the location of his great wealth. From under his greasy shirt the Gypsy produced a yellowed and crumpled parchment for which the merchant gave him 1000 crowns.

After some difficulty the merchant obtained permission to excavate and bound himself by agreement to give a < tenth of his find to the parish of Bory, where the treasure was supposed to'be : hidden. The heirs of the treacherous , ; corporal who still lived there claimed the whole of any treasure found, and an expensive legal battle followed before an agreement could be reached. At last the excavations began—bones and iron jars were unearthed, but no gold. Meantime, the police discovered that the Gypsy was offering a second parchment to another wealthy man, declar- 1 ing to him that this contained the true aecret of the corporal’s gold, the first one being a worthless document. The Gypsy was arrested and brought before the magistrate. Experts discovered that both “parchments” were | clever forgeries. They were only of hand-made vellum soaked in oil and ironed out with an ordinary flat iron, .■ the mysterious drawings and wording •, being supplied by the young Gypsy him - • self. When the magistrate expressed $$ amazement at the skill displayed in the pJ,3 forgeries, the youth replied:— “It is an age of progress also for us, gracious sir. With the old Gypsy || bricks one can never make one’s way in the modern world.”