mad4wrecks
Bronze Member
- Dec 20, 2004
- 2,263
- 109
- Detector(s) used
- Aquapulse, DetectorPro Headhunter, Fisher F75
- Primary Interest:
- Shipwrecks
I prefer to look at treasure hunting this way (from my website)
By Henry James Forman
From Collier's, December 26, 1914
On every coast, in every land, are legends of hidden treasure. Not a bay or inlet of the sea but some sunken galleon, some long-lost treasure ship is moldering upon the bottom with golden doubloons and yellow ingots pouring from her ribs. But the sea has no monopoly on hidden wealth. Write a tale of buried riches, a "Gold Bug" or a "Treasure Island," and the popular fancy rises to it as to an alluring bait. Scarce a grange or farmstead, scarce a thorp or village, but a rumor of buried gold has touched it with romance.
Truly, the tradition of hidden riches is part of the consciousness of all the races of men and, could we but trace it out, no people would be found devoid of it. But deeper still in the human soul, at the very center of our being, beyond the mind's material picture of wealth, the heart contains and cherishes a less tangible, more spiritual form of the same belief. The golden doubloons become the wealth of the soul, the jewels and the ingots are the rich human qualities that transcend poverty, that transcend success. Without them evolution from the beast had been impossible.
That is the inner Kingdom of Heaven that founders of religions proclaim; that is the treasure of the heart compared with which all others are worthless. From every soul there shines, bright or dim, the gold among the wreckage. And the business of right living is in reality a kind of great salvage enterprise. Send your will down like a diver to the foundered galleon, and, if it be but strong enough, it will return laden with the wealth of the Indies. Send it, and never will it return quite empty-handed. And --greater salvage still-- send the diver into other hearts! Always beneath the hulk of the galleon, however deep, however covered over with weeds and barnacles, the gold lies gleaming for the seeker; and if you find for one his treasure, you make him rich indeed --and you are a sharer in his riches.
And surely this is a truth: If you will raise for everyone at least a fragment of his deep-encrusted, sand-bespattered gold, will you not people the earth about you with the grateful ones you have enriched from their own measure?
By Henry James Forman
From Collier's, December 26, 1914
On every coast, in every land, are legends of hidden treasure. Not a bay or inlet of the sea but some sunken galleon, some long-lost treasure ship is moldering upon the bottom with golden doubloons and yellow ingots pouring from her ribs. But the sea has no monopoly on hidden wealth. Write a tale of buried riches, a "Gold Bug" or a "Treasure Island," and the popular fancy rises to it as to an alluring bait. Scarce a grange or farmstead, scarce a thorp or village, but a rumor of buried gold has touched it with romance.
Truly, the tradition of hidden riches is part of the consciousness of all the races of men and, could we but trace it out, no people would be found devoid of it. But deeper still in the human soul, at the very center of our being, beyond the mind's material picture of wealth, the heart contains and cherishes a less tangible, more spiritual form of the same belief. The golden doubloons become the wealth of the soul, the jewels and the ingots are the rich human qualities that transcend poverty, that transcend success. Without them evolution from the beast had been impossible.
That is the inner Kingdom of Heaven that founders of religions proclaim; that is the treasure of the heart compared with which all others are worthless. From every soul there shines, bright or dim, the gold among the wreckage. And the business of right living is in reality a kind of great salvage enterprise. Send your will down like a diver to the foundered galleon, and, if it be but strong enough, it will return laden with the wealth of the Indies. Send it, and never will it return quite empty-handed. And --greater salvage still-- send the diver into other hearts! Always beneath the hulk of the galleon, however deep, however covered over with weeds and barnacles, the gold lies gleaming for the seeker; and if you find for one his treasure, you make him rich indeed --and you are a sharer in his riches.
And surely this is a truth: If you will raise for everyone at least a fragment of his deep-encrusted, sand-bespattered gold, will you not people the earth about you with the grateful ones you have enriched from their own measure?
