liable estimates of the
amount of gold and silver that still rests embedded in the tidal silt
of Vigo Bay. There were sunk in water too deep to be explored by the
engineers of that century eleven French men-of-war, and at least a
round dozen of treasure laden galleons. The French fleet carried no
small amount of gold and silver which had been entrusted to the Admiral
and his officers by merchants of the West Indies. As for the galleons,
the English _Post_ of November 13,1702, stated:

"Three Spanish officers belonging to the galleons, one of whom was the
Admiral of the Assogna ships, are brought over who report that the
effects that were on board amounted to nine millions sterling, and that
the Spaniards, for want of mules to carry the plate into the country,
had broke the bulk of very few ships before the English forced the
boom."

The amount of the treasure is greatly underestimated in the foregoing
assertion, for the annual voyage of the plate fleet had carried to
Spain an average lading worth from thirty to forty million dollars, and
this doomed flota bore the accumulated treasure of three years. Not
more than ten million dollars in bullion and merchandise could have
been looted by the Dutch and English victors, according to the most
reliable official records. Our enthusiastic friend, Signor Don Carlos
Iberti, he who had been "flying from province to province," in behalf
of the latest treasure company of Vigo Bay, dug deep into the musty
records of the "Account Books of the Ministry of Finance, of the
Colonies, of the Royal Treasury, of the Commercio of Cadiz, of the
Council of the West Indies," and so on, and can tell you to the last
peso how much gold and silver was sent from the mines of America in the
treasure fleets, and precisely the value of the shipments entrusted to
the magnificent flota of 1702. A score of English authorities might be
quoted to confirm what has been said of the vastness of this lost
treasure. The event was the sensation of the time in Europe, and many
pens were busy chronicling in divers tongues the details of the
catastrophe and the results thereof. In a letter from Madrid which
reached England a few days after the event, the writer lamented:

"Yesterday an express arrived from Vigo with the melancholy news that
the English and Dutch fleets came before that place the 22nd past and
having made themselves masters of the mouth of the river, in less than
two hours took and burnt al