dollars worth of treasure, gold and silver statues, church plate, jewels, etc., etc., and millions have been expended and are still being expended, in search of the precious deposits.
Mr. Adolpho Blumenkron is one of the most inveterate of these treasure seekers. As we rode out of the city, we were shown several old convent and church structures of great extent, now secularized, which he has purchased, and mined under and burrowed about, like a ferret, in search of the treasure of the Fathers, but always with the same total want of success. He told us, how on one occasion he found the vault in which were buried some of the old church dignitaries of Cortez's time, and looking down into it, was gladdened by the sight of two mummies each with a golden crown upon his head. He was into that vault in no time, with the help of Providence and a crowbar, and bore the glittering crowns out to the light of day. Fancy his feelings, when with trembling hands he applied a file to the gaudy baubles, and found them to be a base cheat, a sham, bilk, delusion, fraud, and rascally imposition! Would you believe it? those crowns were made of tin or some other base metal, and gilded, and if the holy fathers ever had any others—save the final crown of glory—they were not buried in them, for reasons best known to themselves or their servants.
It is believed that there were twelve statues of the Apostles of life size, made wholly from silver and gold, in the Jesuit College, and that the fathers—having received a secret intimation of the intention of the Government—buried them somewhere thereabouts, and the search for them is not yet abandoned.
In the City of Mexico, an apparently better founded
