Note 220-2 — Chapter I

The custom of burying treasure is produced by a want of security (compare Montanari, Delia Moneta, 1683-87, 97 Cust.), and by an absence of the spirit which leads to production. As Burke says, where property is not sacred, gold and silver fly back into the bosom of the earth whence they came. Hence, in the middle ages, this custom was frequent, and is yet, in most oriental despotic countries. (Montesquieu, E. des L., XXII, 2.) And so in Arabia: d'Arvieux, Rosenmüller's translation, 61 seq. Fontanier, Voyage dans l'Inde et dans le Golfe persique, 1644, I, 279. A Persian governor on his death bed refused to give any information as to where he had buried his treasure. His father had always murdered the slave who helped him to bury his money or any part of it. (Klemm, Kulturgeschichte, VII, 220.) In lower stages of civilization, it is a very usual luxury to have one's treasures buried with the corpse. In relation to David's grave, see Joseph., Ant. Jud., VII, 15,3, XIII, 8, 4; XVI, 7, 1. Hence the orientals believe that every unknown ruin hides a treasure, that every unintelligible inscription is a talisman to discover it by, and that every scientific traveler is a treasure-digger, (v. Wrede, R. in Hadhramaut, 113, 182 and passim.) Similarly in Sicily. (Rehfues, Neuester Zustand von S., 1807, I, 99.) In the East Indies every circumstance that weakens confidence in the power of the government increases the frequency of treasure-burial, as was noticed, for instance, after the Afghan defeat. Treasure-burial by the Spanish peasantry (Borrego, translated by Rottenkamp, 81), in Ireland (Wakefield, Account of I. I, 593), in the interior of Russia (Storch, Handbuch, I, 142), and among the Laplanders. The custom was very much strengthened among the latter when, in 1813, they lost 80 per cent. by the bankruptcy of the state through its paper money. (Brooke, Winter in Lapland, 1829, 119; compare Blom, Statistik von Norwegen, II, 205.) As during the Thirty Years' War, so also in 1848, it is said that large amounts of money were burned by the Silesian and Austrian peasantry. Much of it is lost forever, but, on the whole, much treasure is wont to be found where much is buried; governments there make it a regal right to search for it.