The Pacific Commercial Advertiser

CAPTAIN KIDD.

There is no case which illustrates better the fact that, when people get into a certain way of believing, nothing will alter their beliefs, than the case of Captain Kidd, the pirate. He is regarded as the typical pirate. His bloody deeds are recorded in prose and song. For nearly two hundred years, men have been searching for his buried treasures all along the Atlantic Coast of the United States. Every few years a syndicate is organized to buy some land, in which he buried gold, and dig it out. We know, personally, of an instance where a number of shrewd business men spent $50,000 in hunting for these buried treasures. And yet, it is proved, beyond dispute, that Captain Kidd was not a bloody pirate, but a respectable ship captain, who did business in New York City in 1690. He commanded a ship, which was fitted out by men, some of them English noblemen, and attempted to capture pirates, instead of becoming a pirate. But his crew mutinied, and drove him into the capture of several merchantmen. An article in the November number of Harper's Monthly, states that he only captured four vessels and killed one man. After his one voyage, he returned to New York, remained there some time, was treated well by the Colonial Government, made a full report of his actions, and voluntarily went to England. There, unfortunately, he, and the men behind him, were on the wrong side in politics, and he was arrested for capturing a certain merchant vessel, which he took into port. He was convicted, and hung in chains. But out of these few events, romancers have constructed a dazzling story of piracy, and several clever poems have made him the hero of frightfully bloody deeds-the wicked sailor, who carried the black flag over all the seas. Mankind was once convinced that he was a great pirate, and it was so believed, for ages. It will not have its beliefs disturbed. It would rather regret it, if it was compelled to acknowledge that he was not what the story books call him.