the
probabilities. For example, it would hardly do to have Napoleon win
the Battle of Waterloo as the hero of a novel. What really happened
and what the author imagines might have happened must be dovetailed
with an eye to avoid contradicting the known facts. Like almost
everyone else, however, Poe took the most reckless liberties with the
career of poor Captain Kidd and his buried treasure and cared not a rap
for historical evidence to the contrary. Although Stevenson is ready
to admit that his "skeleton is conveyed from Poe," the author of
"Treasure Island" is not wholly fair to himself. The tradition that
secretive pirates were wont to knock a shipmate or two on the head as a
feature of the program of burying treasure is as old as the hills. The
purpose was either to get rid of the witnesses who had helped dig the
hole, or to cause the spot to be properly haunted by ghosts as an
additional precaution against the discovery of the hoard.

What Stevenson "conveyed" from Poe was the employment of a skeleton to
indicate the bearings and location of the treasure, although, to be
accurate, it was a skull that figured in "The Gold Bug." Otherwise, in
the discovery of the remains of slain pirates, both were using a stock
incident of buried treasure lore most generally fastened upon the
unfortunate Captain Kidd.

Most of the treasure legends of the Atlantic coast are fable and
moonshine, with no more foundation than what somebody heard from his
grandfather who may have dreamed that Captain Kidd or Blackbeard once
landed in a nearby cove. The treasure seeker needs no evidence,
however, and with him "faith is the substance of things hoped for."
There is a marsh of the Penobscot river, a few miles inland from the
bay of that name, which has been indefatigably explored for more than a
century. A native of a statistical turn of mind not long ago expressed
himself in this common-sense manner:

"Thousands of tons of soil have been shovelled over time and again. I
figure that these treasure hunters have handled enough earth in turning
up Codlead Marsh to build embankments and fill cuts for a railroad
grade twenty miles long. In other words, if these lunatics that have
tried to find Kidd's money had hired out with railroad contractors,
they could have earned thirty thousand dollars at regular day wages
instead of the few battered old coins discovered in 1798 which started
all this terrible waste of energy."

The most co