Note 3 — BURIED TREASURE LEGENDS OF MILAM COUNTY

Before the mission was abandoned in 1755, legend had seized upon it; and when Dr. Bolton discovered the site hardly a dozen years ago, he found that legend had kept treasure hunters familiar with the grounds and ruins.3 He quotes Father Mariano,4 priest of the time, on legendary causes that contributed to the final abandonment of the mission: “The sacrilegious homicides having been perpetrated, the elements at once conspired, declaring divine justice provoked; for in the sky appeared a ball of fire so horrible that all were terrified, and with so notable a circumstance that it circled from the presidio to the mission of the Occisos [Orcoquiza], and returned to the same presidio, when it exploded with a noise as loud as could be made by a heavily loaded cannon. The river ceased to run, and its waters became so corrupt that they were extremely noxious and intolerable to the smell. The air became so infected that all who went to the place, even though merely passing, became infected by the pest, which became so malicious that many of the inhabitants died, and we all found ourselves in the last extremes of life. Finally, the land became so accursed that what had been a beautiful plain became converted into a thicket, in which opened horrible crevices that caused terror. And the inhabitants became so put to it, in order to escape the complete extermination that threatened them, that they moved more than thirty leagues away, with no other permission than that granted them by the natural right to save their own lives.”