[UA] THE BEALE CIPHERS

[Cassady Toles]

Sounds like a modern Spanish Prisoner to me...

On Fri, 22 Sep 2000 12:28:17 -0400, ua at lists.uchicago.edu wrote:

  Hey --
  
  This came up on a different list.  Beyond its obvious UAness, it is real? 
I mean, it just screams "Hoax!" but does anyone take it seriously?
  
  -- Eric, whose copy of Suppressed Transmissions is at home
  
  
                                  THE BEALE CIPHERS, by E.E.REMINGTON
  
  Jeffrey A. Hill
  1661 W. Republic #20
  Salina, Kansas 67401
  
  May 29, 1989
  
  The Beale Papers
  
  In the Spring of 1885, James B. Ward [7], acting as the agent for an
  anonymous author, began selling copies of a pamphlet entitled, THE BEALE
PAPERS, which purported to tell the true story of a fortune in gold,
silver,and jewels buried in the Virginia hills. The only clues as to the
location of that treasure were three letters from a Mr. Thomas J. Beale to a
Mr. Robert Morriss, together with three messages in cipher that were
reprinted in the pamphlet. The letters from Beale tell the story of a party
of thirty men who went West on a hunting trip in 1817. As luck would have
it, while tracking a herd of buffalo in northern New Mexico, they discovered
a rich
  vein of gold. Abandoning the buffalo hunt for a more lucrative
occupation,they began to accumulate a sizable hoard of gold and silver. In
1819, the accumulated store of treasure was transported to Virginia, where
it was buried for safe keeping about four miles from Buford's Tavern (modern
day Montvale). A second shipment followed in 1821. According to the Ward
pamphlet, the entire party of thiry men disappeared without a trace before a
third shipment could be made.
  
  That would have been the end of the story except that before returning to
New Mexico in 1822, Beale had decided to entrust Robert Morriss, a Lynchburg
innkeeper of high moral repute, with a strongbox containing two letters and
three ciphers. A third letter was mailed to Morriss from St. Louis,
instructing him to wait ten years before opening the box and then, if Beale
had not returned before then to claim it, to read the papers inside. At that
  time (in 1832), a fourth letter was supposed to reach Morriss from someone
in St. Louis who had been entrusted with the key to the ciphers. Morriss
would then have been able to decipher the messages and learn the location of
the treasure vault, its contents, and the names of the Beale party's next of
kin to whom he was to deliver the treasure (after deducting an amount
specified by Beale as a fee for these services). Unfortunately, the letter
bearing the key never arrived and Morriss was unable to comply with Beale's
final request.
  
  In 1862, one year before his death, Morriss passed the contents of the
strongbox to the unknown person who was later to become the author of the
Beale pamphlet. This person made the discovery that the Declaration of
Independence is the key to Cipher #2, which describes the contents of the
treasure vault. But after twenty years of effort, Cipher #1, which gives the
location of the treasure, and Cipher #3, which names the Beale Party's next
  of kin, remained unbroken. The author explains that he has been forced to
abandon his own attempt to break the ciphers, and is offering the pamphlet
to the public for a small fee, in order to recover some of the personal
wealth that he has lost by devoting twenty years of his life to the Beale
mystery.
  
  
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