Lost Treasure of The Cross on the Rock
The LEGEND speaks of how it is valued at above $350,000 or likely far more specified the modern spike in the value of gold and it mentions how Indigenous Americans realized of the tale of the “Cross on the Rock” as handed down by their elders. Also recognised as the lost treasure of Borie it is conjectured to be one of the little acknowledged caches of hidden prosperity but to be discovered in The usa in the heart of a woodland paradise recognized as God’s Place, Potter County, United states.
Could this treasure nonetheless exist?
Intrigued by the legend I embarked on a journey of discovery seeking for the supply of tale identified that if it existed it was to be mine.
When this treasure was hidden, America was nevertheless a huge wilderness in the 1600’s. Few other than the hardiest explorers and fur trappers had ventured even more inland than the coastal colonies. Having said that when Louis Frontenac arrived in 1672 Canada was no for a longer time the toddler colony it experienced been when Richelieu founded the Company of A person Hundred Associates. By way of the attempts of Louis XIV and Colbert it experienced assumed the type of an organized province and Frontenac as the new governor sought to develop controlled parishes and trade opportunities from Montreal to New Orleans in “New France”. By armed conflict Frontenac expelled English Colonists and subdued the Indigenous Us residents saying a wide territory for France which was later marked by guide plates buried in the floor as discovered by Celoron de Beinville and mapped by Father Pierre Bonnecamps, a “Jesuit Mathematician. The fur trade in particular flourished building the prosperity that Frontenac sought and the expansion of “New France” was progressing quickly.
My study yielded that mid in the 1680’s, pretty much a full century ahead of white settlers started to permanently occupy what is now Potter County, a smaller celebration of French Canadians from the fur investing institution that belonged to Louis Frontenac and Robert Cavelier remaining New Orleans by boat, for the return vacation to Montreal. I quickly found out problems in the legend as recorded by some others. I experienced been deceived in the facts of the trip most intentionally by another person desirous of trying to keep the mystery of this treasure cache to on their own.
The initial tale states [The planned route was up the Mississippi to the junction of the Ohio and then up the Beautiful River, as the Indians call it, to the Allegheny and then northward to the mouth of the Conewango near present day Warren. From that point, a short run would bring the expedition to Chautauqua Lake near the present day Jamestown, New York. From this point, the party could practically roll down hill by the way of Prendergrast Creek and then home free by the way of Lake Erie into Lake Ontario and Northward to Montreal. Nearly the entire trip would be made by water, without the danger of long overland, backbreaking portages.]
I shortly arrived to study that a trip down the Mississippi was a one particular way ticket in the late 1600’s. A folly to feel that just one could pull rafts or paddle canoes counter present for above 3000 miles back to Montreal in an expeditious way via a hostile and unsettled wilderness! The return outings were generally accomplished by indicates of sailing ships from the port of New Orleans to the port of Baltimore and then by ascending the Susquehanna River in canoe to the West Department and Sinnemahonning Rivers and onward to Jamestown N.Y., up the Excellent Lakes to Montreal. The rivers ended up the highways of the 1600-1700’s with the only trails currently being people of the Indigenous Americans roads had still to be made in any of the interior colonies.
[And so the coureur de bois left New Orleans on rafts loaded with provisions and a number of small kegs, each of which were loaded with gold coins covered with a thin film of gunpowder, and anchored securely to the crude log transports by means of ropes and iron nails. The gold was to be delivered to His Most Gracious Majesty’s Royal Governor in Montreal, (Gov. Frontenac) and the party was instructed to guard the valuable cargo with their lives. Under no circumstances was it to fall into the hands of the English, the Americans nor the hated Senecas, who were always at war with the French. ]
The occasion manufactured the uneventful trip about the idea of Florida and up the East Coast of The usa to the Chesapeake Bay and began the next leg and additional arduous part of their journey. The Susquehanna River a rather shallow entire body of h2o snakes languidly via Pennsylvania interspersed with white h2o and rapids that are identified to wreak havoc on Northward voyages based on the time. The hazards of ascending rapids, portaging tiny waterfalls and evading hostile Indians as a result of Pennsylvania’s Wyoming area had been perfectly documented. As the rivers narrowed steering clear of Indians became significantly unachievable. Significantly outnumbered and pursued by way of the wilderness the Frenchmen grew to become more and more wary acknowledging that they experienced grow to be the prey in considerably far more than a cat and mouse sport together the West Branch River.
With placement fastened and mapped by the Jesuits the exasperated Frenchmen buried their treasure for protected trying to keep close to the confluence of two rivers selecting that it was safer to secret it quickly and return for it with a larger expeditionary pressure than to chance losing their life and the treasure to the Seneca war social gathering. The correct location of the treasure was marked by the Jesuits by chiseling a massive cross into the rock beneath which it lay.
The Jesuits led by Étienne da Carheil, effectively educated as a mathematician, spiritual scholar and cartographer and Father Ernest Laborde determined to keep at the rear of to decoy and change the savages to Christianity as the voyagers proceeded under protect of darkness up the Sinnemahoning River and onto New York eluding their enemies and escaping to Montreal.
Louis Frontenac was recalled again to France shortly following his fur buying and selling celebration arrived in Montreal not able to get to his income, and Cavelier died in 1687 at a person of the trading outposts that he had aided to set up.
Frontenac returned to Quebec in the autumn of 1689, just after the Iroquois massacred the people today of Lachine and just before they descended on people of La Chesnaye. The universal temper was a single of terror and despair. Quelling the warring redmen and securing his outposts from English squatters led Frontenac on a military marketing campaign that lasted numerous decades. On his victory he straight away sent solders to the Pennsylvania wilds to get his gold. With his health and fitness declining Louis Frontenac was not able to accompany his adult men and on the 28th of November 1698 Frontenac died at the Château St Louis. His fortune now destined to remain in the ground.
Frontenac’s enemies were being fond of expressing that he made use of his situation to make illicit profits from the fur trade. Outside of issue he traded to some extent, but it would be harsh to accuse him of venality or peculation on the strength of these evidence as exists. There is a sturdy probability that the king appointed him in the expectation that he would increase his cash flow from resources which lay outside his income. As a member of the King’s Court it was envisioned that to undertake such a desolate appointment in the new planet it would go unsaid that any riches that could be garnered would be one’s to maintain. General public feeling differs from age to age pertaining to the latitude which could be authorized a general public servant in these issues. Beneath a democratic régime the typical is quite distinct from that which has existed, for the most aspect, less than autocracies in previous ages. Frontenac was a guy of difference who accepted an essential submit at a little wage. We may perhaps infer that the king was keen to allow for him anything from perquisites. If so, his profits from the fur trade grow to be a subject of degree. So long as he held in the bounds of reason and decency, the authorities raised no objection. Frontenac surely was not a governor who pillaged the colony to feather his individual nest. If he took profits, they have been not considered excessive by any person other than Duchesneau who was Frontenac’s rival in the King’s court docket who had been snubbed for the situation of Governor. The king had recalled Frontenac not since he was venal, but mainly because he was quarrelsome and returned him upon noticing that he was precisely the appropriate gentleman for the position.
Native Individuals understood of the rock and conjecturing as to its importance created their legend to clarify its existence.
Around Keating till the railroad was created in 1901, could be observed the “Cross on the Rock” a good all-natural wonder a great cross of heroic proportions carved on a rock along the river. The good news is an superb photograph of the outstanding organic curiosity is in existence considering the fact that it since has sloughed away.