Cape Breton Deaths February 16, 2009 Monday Is there gold in that thar sandbar ? LEROY PEACH The Cape Breton Post In 1966, Port Morien resident Gerald Martell found, in a house that he bought from the Bown family, a well written and compelling document about a hidden treasure. Ancestors of the Bowns came to this area as pioneers by way of Ireland in the 1860s. The story of the treasure is told by a grandmother to her grandson, thereby giving it an air of authenticity. It appears to have been written around 1900. The grandmother recalled that the Bowns came to Morien at a time when commercial mining was just beginning and Cowbay Mines was a bustling community which would grow eventually to a village of 3,000. One day one of the Bown women met a man named Pierre, an old French fisherman, who told her an interesting tale. He said that the French from Louisbourg, in 1745, buried their treasure in the belief they would one day return once the English left. In fact, he said there was buried treasure on the Morien sandbar and that two rival parties of Frenchmen came back to look for it but the shifting sands thwarted them. They quarrelled. Two were killed. They left the place saying that it was cursed. >From time to time, fishermen saw lights moving up and down the bar. These were the ghosts, he said, searching for the lost treasure. The grandmother told the grandson that she saw the treasure. She said that one day she was picking berries on the bar. She was accompanied by her faithful dog. On the way home, she came to a clump of trees at the entrance to the sandbar. Her husband came looking for her. Playfully she hid from him and went deeper and deeper into a forested area near the lake at the back of the bar. She then headed back to her home. At a spot near a fallen log, the dog began to dig furiously and uncovered a box four feet long. The cover had fallen away. Inside there was gold. She marked the area carefully, noting in particular the angles of the surrounding spruce and birch trees. Then she emerged from the dense woods to greet her husband. Together they tried to find the spot where the hidden treasure was, even climbing to locate the angled trees. But the trees were all alike. She then told old Pierre. He said, "No use at all ma'amŠ It's gone forever. I've heard tell that when there's treasure buried anywhere, the good God lets the earth open onceŠ If the person that's lucky enough to see it can get out even a little bit, then the ground can't close again. But if they leave it as it was, they never find it again." They and others searched for weeks, "the lure of hidden wealth," like the lure of the modern-day lotto, the scratch-and-win and the casino, impelling them onward. On Oct. 24, 1869, the dreaded Saxby Gale piled tons of sand on the sandbar area and almost filled up the lake back of it. To this day, the fortune has never been found. Was this well written account a hoax or the truth? I leave the reader to decide. LeRoy Peach lives in Port Morien and may be reached at leroy_peach@yahoo.ca. His column appears every week in the Cape Breton Post