The Silver Madonna and Other Tales of America's Greatest Lost Treasures Read Free

companions had died during the night. Desperate, he fled from the shelter and resumed plodding up the trail that paralleled the Israel River. When darkness arrived, he sought shelter in a hollow log for the night. The following morning he rose and resumed his trek in hopes of encountering a farm or settlement where he might find help.
    Around midmorning, the Ranger arrived at a small settlement of woodcutters consisting of five families. On spotting the pathetic, emaciated wretch wearing clothes that were little more than rags, the settlers took him in, fed him, and tried to make him comfortable.
    Nearly two weeks passed before the Ranger was able to sit up and talk. He was lucid for only short periods at a time, but woke often during the night screaming and delirious. During his period of recovery, he told his caregivers about the Rangers’ raid on the Abenaki village in Canada, the theft of the Silver Madonna, and the ordeal of fleeing from the French soldiers and Indians through the wilderness. In a very detailed narrative, he related how he and his companions lay in the rock shelter trying to recover from their illness and exhaustion. He told of how trooper Parsons pushed the Silver Madonna off the edge of the shelter and into the river.
    With the passage of a few more days, the Ranger regained much of his health, but his mind never recovered from the ordeal. During his second month of living among the woodcutters he went completely insane.
    On hearing the story of the Silver Madonna and its fate at the hands of trooper Parsons, one of the woodcutters said he knew the location of the rock shelter that was described by the Ranger. Two weeks later, he and three other men left the settlement one morning, followed the trail that paralleled the Israel River, and arrived at the specified location. They climbed the steep, switch-backing trail that led to the shelter and found the decayed remains of two men and a horse. They walked back and forth along the riverbank just below the shelter searching for some sign of the Silver Madonna, but the stream was too deep and swift at this location for them to spot anything. They returned to the settlement by dusk, empty-handed.

    As far as anyone knows, the Silver Madonna has never been recovered, and most who have researched this tale are convinced it still lies at some location in the Israel River below the slope that leads to the rock shelter where the fleeing Rangers took refuge. Given an estimated weight of no less than one hundred and fifty pounds and the high specific gravity of silver, it is unlikely that the idol was carried downstream by the current for any significant distance from the point where it entered the river. As a result of several explorations into the region, there is reason to believe that the statue may have sunk a short distance into the soft mud of the bottom of the stream, or may have been covered over by gravel and silt carried by the river. The point where the Silver Madonna was pushed into the river is just downstream from the small New Hampshire settlement of Jefferson.
    Today, the Silver Madonna is regarded as one of the most cherished artifacts from the French and Indian War. If recovered, the value of the silver at this writing is estimated to be around sixty to one hundred thousand dollars. The historical, antique, and collector value, however, would amount to several million dollars.

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    The Lost Treasure Ship of the California Desert
    As unlikely as it seems, a seventeenth-century Spanish sailing vessel lies somewhere in the rugged, arid environment of the Southern California desert. Within the dune-covered hull of this ship that became stranded during a flood over four centuries ago lies a quantity of wooden casks, each filled to the top with rare black pearls harvested from the waters of the Gulf of California. Over the years and during the times the ship has been exposed by the constant winds, it has been encountered by travelers and prospectors