eon was fought over about this time, not only by
the mettlesome MacLeans but also by the Duke of York as Lord High
Admiral of Scotland and the Isles, succeeding in that office the Duke
of Lennox. He challenged the rights of the house of Argyll to the
_Florencia_ and her treasure and instituted legal proceedings in due
form which were decided in favor of the defendant, thereby confirming
for all time the possession of the wreck, which belongs to the present
Duke of Argyll. The verdict read in part as follows:

"The rights, reasons, and allegations of the parties, and the gifts and
ratifications therein referred to, produced by Archibald, Earl of
Argyll, being at length heard and seen, the Lords of Council and
Session assoilized the said Archibald Earl of Argyll from the hail
points and articles of the summons libelled or precept intended and
pursued against him at the instance of said William Aikman,
Procurator-Fiscal of the Admiralty, before said Lord High Admiral and
his deputies, and decreed and declared him quit and free thereof in all
time coming. Dated 27th, July, 1677."

There comes into the story, during the lifetime of the ninth Earl, the
figure of Sir William Sacheverall, Governor of the Isle of Man, who was
interested as a partner in one of the several concessions granted. He
had left an account of his voyage to Mull in the year 1672, printed
shortly after the event, in which he not only records sundry efforts to
fish up the treasure but gives also a lively and vivid picture of the
primitive Highlander on his native heather.

"About twelve o'clock," he wrote, "we made the Sound of Mull. We
saluted the Castle of Duart with five guns, and they returned three. I
sent in my pinnace for the boats, and things you had left there; and in
the evening we cast anchor in the Bay of Tauber Murry, which for its
bigness, is one of the finest and fastest in the world. The mouth of
it is almost shut up with a little woody island call'd the Calve, the
opening to the South not passable for small boats at low-water, and
that to the North barely Musquet-shot over. To the Landward, it is
surrounded with high Mountains cover'd with woods, pleasantly
intermixed with rocks, and three or four Cascades of water which throw
themselves from the top of the Mountain with a pleasure that is
astonishing, all of which together make one of the oddest and most
charming Prospects I ever saw.

"Italy itself, with all the assistance of