Today travel agencies offer a new type of service - tours for treasure hunters. Wishing - more than enough. For their hard-earned money, a person gets the opportunity to wash gold in the waste of gold mining, to look for precious stones in abandoned mines.
In the Seychelles, tourists are handed a shovel, a worn map - and sent to the forest. Venezuela offers to take part in the search for pirate treasures. Those who cannot afford to dig for gold on the Caribbean coast can turn their eyes to the Arkhangelsk region. According to legends, the famous Yermak hid his gold in the Shelomyan villages before going to Siberia. There are two routes for treasure seekers to choose from - a water route, along rivers by kayaks, and a walking route. Romance, and more!
TRAPS AND SECRETS
However, professional seekers do not see anything romantic in their craft. They know that it is a dangerous undertaking to look for treasures. After all, in Russia no one hid money just like that. The treasures either spoke from uninvited guests, or put so-called traps nearby.
Traps are well-disguised devices designed to injure, or even kill, a person who is looking for someone else's good. There are cases when treasure hunters were left without hands, having decided to explore the insides of a pot or a jug - an invisible device from the outside cut off a limb completely.
It is customary to refer to secrets as deliberate changes in the landscape of the area. A classic example: a treasure is buried near a stream, then a small dam is erected. As a result, the stream changes its course and flows exactly over the buried treasures. And only the owner knows exactly where to look for wealth.
Promotional video:
BARREL WITH COINS
In the 1860s, Russian metropolitan newspapers wrote about the unfortunate children who died of hunger in the Slobodsky district of the Vyatka province. Ruined their treasure - a barrel of coins.
An old pine tree grew near the village of Lekma. During the time of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, a boyar, who fell out of favor, buried his treasures under it. Hiding from the pursuit and feeling that he would soon be captured, he hid the money under a young tree then. Alas, he didn’t get the money.
The legend of the boyar treasure was passed down from generation to generation, but no one dared to look for it: they believed that the one who touched an old pine tree would certainly suffer misfortune.
After the reform of 1861, the land around the tree went to the Berdinsky family, and in the spring of 1863, sixteen-year-old Savvaty, together with his stepmother, decided to plow it up. Suddenly, a birch-bark barrel appeared from under the plow, and silver coins of the 17th century fell from it.
From that moment on, everything went awry in the Berdinsky family. The boy shared the coins with his stepmother, she sold her part of the treasure, left her family and disappeared in the city. Savvaty stayed with his young brother and sister. On the advice of a local priest, he sent his coins to the Archaeological Commission of St. Petersburg. But from there they sent him only gratitude and a scanty reward, which was not even enough to spend the winter.
KUNAM ROBBER'S CITY
The ancient city of Lebedyan was founded on the banks of the Don at the beginning of the 17th century. But dashing people have chosen these places much earlier. Back in the XIV century, there was an earthen town of the robber Kunam, who traded along the river banks with his sons. And in the 16th century, the famous ataman Kudeyar robbed these parts.
Like Kunam, he hid the loot in an earthen town - Gudovo. I made no secret of this. Here are the Don Cossacks, coveted at Gudovo, and killed Kudeyar along with his gang. But the chieftain's treasures were never found …
In the 17th century, peasants and archers fled to the Don, dissatisfied with the sovereign's service. They got lost in gangs and hunted for robberies. In 1681, they robbed the Lebedyansky monastery: they beat the monks to death and took out more than fifty silver and gold frames from the icons. When Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich organized a search for the robbers, they disappeared, burying gold and silver in a grove near the monastery …
In short, there are plenty of legends about the Lebedyan hoards. At the end of the 19th century, even a guidebook was published on the local mortgages. But nobody found the treasures of Kunam and Kudeyar. Solitary seekers disappeared, and groups of searchers quarreled over wealth not yet found and killed each other.
At the end of the 19th century, in order to stop the constant murders, the Lebedyansk mayor ordered to demolish the hill. But among the builders, unexplained deaths began - two died of illness, one was gnawed at by wolves who had come from nowhere, and another had a blow. For almost a century, Tyapkina Gora was forgotten and remembered already in our time - after several gardeners died from a strange disease, who began to dig the ground for planting the future park …
However, there were cases when the conspired Lebedyan treasures were still found, but this did not bring happiness to anyone. In 1903, in a pasture meadow near the village of Trubetchevo, a shepherd boy Ivan Sebyatnikov found a sixteenth century silver coin. He took it to her parents, and they gave it to the local priest. He, after asking the shepherdess about the exact place of the find, started looking for the treasure on his own. Apparently, the priest was "lucky": a week later the church burned down, and the body of a priest and several old gold coins were found in the fire.
TREASURES OF KING SIGIZMUND
They say that the invaders who came to plunder Russia came up with the idea of setting up secret police - at the place of the treasure they killed or buried those who had already died, so that their spirits would guard the hidden good. Most of the legends about the secret police and their victims are about the wealth stolen by the Poles during the Troubles.
In the middle of the 19th century, one of the St. Petersburg newspapers published an interesting text - the confession of the Polish king Sigismund, found in the archives of Warsaw. It began like this: “I sent 973 carts from Moscow with various goods to the Kaluga Gate to Mozhaisk. From Mozhaisk I went the old road to Smolensk. I stopped at Kun'em Bor … "Further, a rather accurate description of the place where the treasures were buried:" There is a churchyard of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, also called Nikolai Lapotny. Near the churchyard there is a river Khvorostyanka, and another Gremyachka …"
Not a publication, but a guide to action! And treasure hunters from all over the country rushed in search of the churchyard. They did not take into account one thing - you cannot imagine the secret police for hidden treasures better than a cemetery. The treasure hunters remembered that it was along the path of the Poles' retreat - at the old churchyard of Nikolai Lapotnik - that a coffin full of gold was once washed during the spring flood. There they began to search. The graves, of course, did not move, but the searches were large-scale. They calmed down only after an unknown disease began to plague the diggers. The skin became covered with red spots, the eyes began to water, and the debilitating diarrhea prevented me from working. When the number of deaths exceeded two dozen, the treasure hunters made their way home.
Another excavation site was the Nikolskoye cemetery near the modern Moscow Region Aprelevka. Those seeking here reasoned as follows. Russian troops followed on the heels of the Poles, and the extra luggage greatly interfered with the retreat. Yes, and Sigismund wrote that he laid the treasures on the way to Mozhaisk, and not near it. Nikolskoye cemetery was dug up from the seventies of the XIX century to the beginning of the XX century, and all to no avail. Only there were more graves at the churchyard: accidents suddenly became more frequent among the treasure hunters. Who will slip into the dug hole will fall and break his neck, and who will hang himself for some unknown reason. In general, they gave up looking there too.
Finally, the most meticulous seekers figured out: the Old Smolensk Road in the 17th century ran much further north, and therefore the cemetery of Alexander Svirsky near Mozhaisk may well be the graveyard of Nikolai Lapotny. Other signs also pointed to this place: it was here that two nameless rivers merged, and in the Time of Troubles there was also the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker.
We took up the shovels, dug everything up and down, buried a dozen people, but again we found nothing. This is how the treasures of King Sigismund lie in the ground: everyone knows that they are, but no one can find them.
Mikhail SMETANIN