Edinburgh, Aug. 30.
A search for sunken treasure and the rescue of things that men value from the grim and tireless custody of the ocean can never fail to appeal to the imagination. In the latest adventure of this kind in Scotland that appeal is intensified by the circumstance that the waters have held their prize for nearly three centuries and a half, and that the original owners were engaged in an enterprise the success of which would have profoundly modified the history of Europe. The divers at present at work in Tober-mary Bay in the Western Highlands are in contact with one of the vessels on which the hopes of Spain and the Counter-Reformation were centred, and their labours bring even to those who only read of them a new and living association with the greatest episode in the long reign of the great Queen Elizabeth.
Before the news of the victory of the English seamen over the Spanish fleet reached Scotland, various vessels of the Armada had been driven upon' the Scottish coast or forced to take refuge in Scottish harbours. Among them was the ''Almirante de Florencia," a galleon which was believed to be laden with gold and jewels. She.came into Tobermory Bay to seek provisions, and, although Scotland was technically a neutral country, a plot was formed for. the vessel's destruction, It was partially successful, there was an explosion, and the vessel was sunk. since that day many efforts have been made-.to salve the treasure, which the ''Alnnrante de Florencia'' was supposed to carry. Wihen she had been- about a century under water an attempt was made to reach the plunder by means of diving bells, and when Sir Walter Scott visited Mull in 1814 he record-oda local tradition that a considerable quantity of treasure was obtained. Another attempt was made in 1740, and on that occasion some guns were brought up. Pieves ai her timber were thrown up from time to time, and, when george IV was in Edinburgh in 1822, Scott presented him with some of these relics. Before the outbreak of the Great War a new salvage scheme was devised, and it attracted the interest not only of speculators but also of historians like the late Mr. Andrew Long, who was inclined to attach some weight to the per-"sistent tradition of the treasure. Will the present adventure be more successful than its predecessors? This summer some' small finds are recorded by the divers, but of treasure properly speaking there is as yet no sign.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.