“Captain Kidd! In these forests, hundreds of miles from the coast!”
Incredible as the folly may seem, such, it appears, was the notion of these men. According to the computation of the money-diggers, Captain Kidd must have been the most successful pirate that ever turned thief on the high seas, and have buried as many treasures as Crœsus displayed. It has been quite common for people to dig for the pirate's treasure along the shores of Long Island, and upon the coast to the northward and southward; but one would never have expected the trees of these inland woods to be uprooted for the same purpose. But men will seek for gold everywhere, and in any way.
This is the third instance of the kind accidentally come to our knowledge. The scene of one was in the heart of the city of New York, and the attraction a singular tree, growing in the yard of a house in Broadway, whose occupant was repeatedly disturbed by applications to dig at its roots. The other two cases occurred among these hills; and on one of these occasions the search was declared to be commenced at the instigation of a professed witch, living in a neighboring village, and regularly armed with a twig of wych-hazel!
But there is more superstition left among us than is commonly supposed. There are still signs and sayings current among the farmers, about the weather and the crops, which they by no means entirely discredit; and there are omens still repeated by nurses and gossips, and young girls, about death-beds, and cradles, and dreams, and wedding-days, which are not yet so powerless but that they make some timid heart beat with hope or
