Beadle's Dime Novels, No. 91: The Lost Cache — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

i 14 THE LOST CACHE. “Tam sure that my old trapper is too honest to lend him- self to any imposition,” “T consider that the white man could have had no object in deceiving the Indian with such an idle tale. If both these suppositions are true, there is only one conclusion we can come to,” “ And that is, that the treasure is there. The next thing is, to find it.” ’ “The conclusion is, that the treasure may be there. As for finding it, we may know that there is a needle in a haystack, but,it would be foolish to attempt to search for it.” “Don’t you suppose that we can find it by the directions under the map ?” “ That remains to be seen ; they are very blind, and as like- ly to lead us astray, as to pring us to the right place. The star in the map I presume to be the starting-point, and that must first be. found, and it can only be guessed at. Then the directions say :‘ West 40 to Spring.” It may mean forty feet, forty rods, or forty miles; it.can not mean forty chains or links, for it is not likely that our man would have had a Gun- ter’s chain among the Indians. We have the course, and can only guess at the distance, or find it out by trial. Suppose we find the spring, we must go ‘ West 21:15 South, 124 to a square buried stone.’ One hundred and twenty four what? That, also, must be guessed .at, or discovered by experiment, and then ensues. a tedious digging for the buried stone, from which we may be mjles away while we are digging for it. If the stone should be found, we are informed that a ‘circle of XX strikes cache.” That may mean a circle with a radius of twenty something, and the treasure—if any there is—is con- cealed somewhere in the circumference of that,circle. As for ‘dropping a perpendicular below,’ I must confess that I am at a loss to understand that direction, unless it may be that one point in the circle may lie on the brink of a precipice, or the edge of a cafion. On the whole, Harry, I think that the bu- ried treasure, as far as finding. it gp concerned, is about in the situation of the needle in the haystack. I don’t want to dis- courage you, but—” “1 am not at all discouraged, I assure you,” quickly answer- ed Harry. “On the contrary, I am now absolutely convinced connicloooks.com