Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
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| Ring, Charm and Coins Found by Warren D. Photo by Warren. |
I awarded Warren Dennison the TBR Detectorist of the Month Award in yesterday's post. I wanted to follow up on that a little today. There were a few things I wanted to emphasize.
After eight hunts, Warren found the ring "at low tide, low on the slope on the wet sand after following a trail of old coins..." He also found a piece of a charm. It is not unusual to find coin lines low on the slope in the wet sand.
I talk about finding coin lines not so much because I want to find the coins, but because they can lead to other things, such as rings. This is a good example.
It is good for all of us when someone does a good deed like Dennis did. It happens more often than we hear, so I wanted to thank Dennis for telling us about it.
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I am going to drop my Treasure Coast Treasure Beach Detecting Conditions Rating back to a 1. That is a difficult call for me because conditions for finding old shipwreck items are still better than they were a couple of weeks ago and all summer. It hasn't been a definite reversal with the beaches all filling in. Still I am predicting that fewer cobs will be found now than earlier in the week, and it won't be as easy to find those few that remain.
Of course my ratings are based upon my best evidence. There is a lot of guess work involved. It isn't like getting on a scale and reading your weight. Still, from all of the corroborating evidence that I've been able to gather over the years, including the results of the polls that I've conducted in the past as well as reports from other people, I'm convinced that my ratings have been fairly accurate.
As I've explained in the past, my five point scale starts with a 1 instead of a zero, because there is always some chance. I'm willing to bet that a few more cobs will be found this weekend, but I'll also bet that it won't be as easy now. There probably will be more people out this weekend.
For the most part, I would not expect the good holes to be getting replenished now. Some beaches are filling a little, but that is not the only factor. Another factor is that the easy finds have mostly been made. One way you can improve your chances is to get away from the beach accesses and the most heavily hunted areas. You might have to walk a mile or two. '
For one example, if you walk south from Turtle Trail, you'll come to one flag pole, but if you keep walking, you'll come to a second flag pole. After reaching the second flag pole, look way down towards the bend where you will see one tall palm tree with a small top sticking up above the others. You could try detecting the area down by the palm tree. I'm not saying to do that now, because it has been checked now, but that is the type of area that will normally not be one of the most heavily detected.
There are a few ways that new coins can pop up in old hunted-out holes. One is when someone comes along and does a better job of detecting. Another is when just an inch or so of sand is move off the hole in one direction or another. It doesn't take a lot of sand being moved for a borderline detectable coin to be brought within range for a person that is detecting carefully.
Coins that were previously masked by something like perhaps a heavy streak of black sand can be more easily detected when the black sand is moved.
The thing to realize is that coins can show up in old worked-out holes after you might think they have all been removed.
And of course, when conditions are right, old holes can be replenished again and again and again.
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Several days ago I posted a link to an article about a Spanish convoy that was destroyed. Larry G. sent me the following email recommending a couple books about the conquest of Mexico. Here is what Larry said.
If you haven't read it yet, I must recommend to you the books, conquest of Mexico, and conquest of Peru, by William H. Prescott. The remains from the slaughter of the Spanish convoy that is being excavated now is documented on p.498, though no mention is made of the Spanish women. The place was Tezcuco, which translates as "Place of Rest." Reportedly, the Tezcucans skinned the Spaniards and hung the skins, along with their accouterments, in their temple, but that the bulk of the loot, which included looted treasure, was sent on to the Aztec emperor.
By the way, the sacrifice of Spanish captives (as with all battle captives), and the eating of them, was something the Spanish would become very familiar with before the conquest was completed. The Spanish convoy above were certainly not the only Spaniards so treated, they are the exception only in that they were utterly destroyed, the only Spanish force I can think of during the conquest that was annihilated.
When Cortes returned to the city, he made it his headquarters for the conquest of the capital and the heavily populated valley with numbers of large cities. Tezcuco itself was a very large and beautiful city, Mexico being a heavily populated land at that time, with thriving markets, trade, and industry, highly organized, with large police forces to keep the peace in the major cities. The Mexicans were especially fond of flowers, and the cultivation, sale and display of flowers was big business. The Aztecs maintained large parks, and gardens in their cities and their suburbs. The Spaniards were astonished by the beauty of the urban and suburban areas, of course with the grand architecture of the great temples dominating the scenes. Sadly, much of this was destroyed in the conquest,the lakes were drained. forests felled, and salt leaching destroyed the soil and the great expanses of cultivated land in Mexico valley became wastelands. Populations dwindled to a fraction of their former number, right up until the 20th century.
The books give pretty precise information as to the location of battlefields around Tezcuco, and it would be very interesting to metal detect and generally poke around those locations.
Thanks Larry.
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Like I said, I don't expect the hunting to be as good this weekend as earlier in the week, yet I do expect a few cobs to be found. The surf will be decreasing throughout the week. That means the cliffs won't be eroding much more, but on the positive side of things, it might give you a chance to detect a little farther out on the beach than you could before.
The really good news is that the beaches haven't completely refilled yet. In fact they've only refilled a small amount. Hopefully they won't completely refill before the next period of erosion comes along. And if we are really lucky, the level of sand will remain down all through the winter. We had such a long period of accretion, now maybe we'll get a long period of decreasing sand levels. It could happen. At least we can hope.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
