In other words, the treasure might be in the
galleon, but it was impossible to find and bring it up. For another
century and more, the _Florencia_ was left undisturbed until about
forty years ago, the present Duke of Argyll, then Marquis of Lorne,
considered it his family duty to investigate the bottom of Tobermory
Bay, his curiosity being pricked at finding the ancient chart, and
other documents already quoted, among the archives stored in Inverary
Castle. More for sport than for profit, he sent down a diver who found
a few coins, pieces of oak, and a brass stanchion, after which the
owner bothered his head no more about these phantom riches for some
time.

In 1903, or three hundred and fifteen years after the _Florencia_ found
her grave in Tobermory Bay, a number of gentlemen of Glasgow, rashly
speculative for Scots, formed a company and subscribed a good many
thousand dollars to equip and maintain a treasure-seeking expedition by
modern methods. The Duke of Argyll, like his ancestors before him, was
ready to grant permission to search the wreck of the galleon for a term
of years, conditioned upon a fair division of the spoils. He let them
have the chart, without which no treasure hunt deserves the name, and
all the family papers dealing with the _Florencia_. In charge of the
operations was placed Captain William Burns of Glasgow, a hard-headed
and vastly experienced wrecker who had handled many important salvage
enterprises for the marine underwriters in seas near and far.

The contrast between this twentieth century syndicate with its steam
dredges and electric lights, and that primitive age when the MacLeans
were harassing Captain Adolpho Smith from their fort beside the bay, is
fairly astonishing. The gentlemen of Glasgow were not moved by
sentiment, however, and soon Captain Burns was spending their money in
a preliminary survey of the waters and the sands where the galleon was
supposed to be. Although the ancient chart was explicit in its
bearings, and these were made when men were living who had seen a part
of the wreck above tide, locating the _Florencia_ proved to be a
baffling puzzle. During the first season, 1903, divers and lighters
were employed in this work of searching, but the salvage consisted of
no more than another bronze cannon loaded with a stone ball, several
swords, scabbards, and blunderbusses, a gold ring, and some fifty
doubloons bearing the names of Ferdinand and Isabella, and Don