was buried in the clay near the water's edge. In the early colonial days,
Grand Island, in Niagara River, was the home of a Frenchman, Clairieux,
an exile or refugee who was attended by a negro servant. During one
summer a sloop visited the island frequently, laden on each trip with
chests that never were taken away in the sight of men, and that are now
supposed to be buried near the site of the Frenchman's cabin. Report had
it that these boxes were filled with money, but if well or ill procured
none could say, unless it were the Frenchman, and he had no remarks to
offer on the subject. In the fall, after these visits of the sloop,
Clairieux disappeared, and when some hunters landed on the island they
found that his cabin had been burned and that a large skeleton, evidently
that of the negro, was chained to the earth in the centre of the place
where the house had stood. The slave had been killed, it was surmised,
that his spirit might watch the hoard and drive away intruders; but the
Frenchman met his fate elsewhere, and his secret, like that of many
another miser, perished with him. In 1888, when a northeast gale had
blown back the water of the river, a farmer living on the island
discovered, just under the surface, a stone foundation built in circular
form, as if it had once supported a tower. In the mud within this circle
he found a number of French gold and silver coins, one of them minted in
1537. Close by, other coins of later date were found, and a systematic
examination of the whole channel has been proposed, as it was also said
that two French frigates, scuttled to keep them out of the hands of the
English, lie bedded in sand below the island, one of them with a naval
paymaster's chest on board.

On the shore of Oneida Lake is an Indian's grave, where a ball of light
is wont to swing and dance. A farmer named Belknap dreamed several times
of a buried treasure at this point, and he was told, in his vision, that
if he would dig there at midnight he could make it his own. He made the