It's no secret that information about the existence of ancient treasures that have not yet been found drives many crazy and excites their imagination. And this is in our time, and imagine what happened to people in the midst of the gold rush in the United States, when one of the publishers published a brochure with an encrypted description of the location of untold wealth.
This happened in 1865, when the Virginian Book published a small booklet with the long title "The Bale Papers or Book Containing True Facts About Treasures Buried in 1819 and 1821 near Buford, Bedford County, Virginia, and Still Not Found." in which an amazing story, even for our time, was told.
Treasure
The pages of the booklet said that in 1817, a certain Thomas Bale gathered a small team and went to the Great Plains of North America in order to hunt buffalo. However, about 400-480 kilometers from Santa Fe, which at that time still belonged to Mexico, the group discovered silver and a rich gold mine. It was decided to change the plans, and instead of hunting, Bale started mining the precious metal and shipping it to the United States. Moreover, there was so much gold and silver that part of the production had to be exchanged in St. Louis for precious stones in order to make the treasures more compact.
The search for gold and silver clouded Bale's mind, and therefore he decided to hide everything he found in the underground mine "near Buford" and go for a new shipment of precious metals.
The author of the brochure, who considered to be unknown, claimed that Thomas Bale came to the hotel of Lynchburg to a certain Robert Morris, after which he left, and when he returned it in 1822, he gave this gentleman a small locked iron box, asking him to open it if he did not appear over the next 10 years. Bale himself again went in search of jewelry and never appeared again.
After waiting even more than 10 years, Morris opened the box. Inside, he found several letters addressed to him, as well as three sheets of paper completely covered with numbers. The letters said that the first sheet contained information about the exact location of the treasures he had hidden, the second - the exact contents of the treasure, and the third - a list of relatives of his team, who needed to give ⅔ of the treasures. The rest was to go to Morris.
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Mysterious cipher
The cryptograms could be deciphered using a key that Bale's unknown friend was supposed to bring to Morris, but no one ever delivered it. No matter how hard Robert tried to figure out the code, nothing happened. And in 1862 he decided to give the sheets to his friend, who had experience in decoding. He is the unnamed author of the booklet, but more on that later.
He also tried to decipher cryptograms on his own. In particular, he suggested that Bale could have used characters from a certain book as a method of encryption, and began to wonder what editions a treasure hunter might have used in the early 19th century.
And supposedly, after many attempts, he managed to figure out what was written on the second sheet. The US Declaration of Independence turned out to be the key book. The approximate decryption is as follows: “In Bedford County, 6 kilometers from Buford, in an abandoned mine at a depth of 1.8 meters, I hid valuables that belong to the people indicated in the third document. In particular, the cache contains 865 kg of gold and 584 kg of silver, as well as precious stones, with a total value of $ 13,000.
All these treasures are safely stored in iron pots. They stand on a stone foundation, and the location of the cache is marked by several stones laid out around it. The first document describes in detail the location of the cache, and therefore no effort will be needed to find it."
The remaining two sheets could not be deciphered and their contents remain unknown to this day.
True or Fiction?
Many, after the publication of the brochure, noted that its author had a great talent for artistic presentation, and therefore the question arose: is the content of the brochure a fiction or a plot of some adventure story?
Moreover, several candidates were nominated as the author, among which was John Sherman and even Edgar Allan Poe. However, the modern examination of the text has not been able to give an exact answer, could these writers be the authors of the brochure. It is also not reliably known whether Thomas Bale existed at all?
Search for treasure
One way or another, the first and third pages have not yet been solved. Moreover, for their decryption, even the appropriate structures were involved. True, there are suggestions that professional decoders were still able to reveal the contents of the letters and opened the cache, taking all the treasures for themselves.
It is also believed that Bale later returned for his treasure, and therefore no one can find him. Although attempts are being made to this day. According to law enforcement officials, every summer they fine treasure hunters who literally flood a place in Pittsylvania County (Virginia) and conduct blind searches, because the approximate location of the treasure is still known.
In conclusion, I note that the estimated value of the treasure, calculated from the data from the second sheet, is about $ 43 million.