THE PRESIDENCY: Treasure Island

When he was a boy at Hyde Park and sailed his toy boats on the placid Hudson, Franklin Roosevelt hungered for romance on the high seas. Never having outgrown his juvenile appetite for maritime adventure, the 32nd U. S. President’s eyes sparkled appreciatively last week when he stepped ashore on a Treasure Island as fabulous as Robert Louis Stevenson’s. Like a big green peppermint gum drop ringed with a frost of spun sugar, the densely vegetated peaks of Cocos Island rose some 2,000 ft. over his head, while all around the island’s steep 13-mileperimeter the Pacific lathered its boiling white waves. Offshore the President could see porpoise sporting glossily. Shark fins cut through the tropical waters like grey scimitars. And a flight of boatswain birds chattered about his head as he laid aside his pith helmet, sat down under a palm tree to share Boston baked beans and brown bread with a parcel of real treasure hunters, to talk of plunder, cities sieged and pirate gold.

Buccaneers like Bonito and Captain Edward Davis are supposed to have used lonely Cocos, 400 mi. from the mainland, to cache their booty. In modern times many a gentleman of fortune has searched Cocos for pirates’ spoils. Not long after Franklin Roosevelt stopped to fish at Cocos on his way to Hawaii last year, a British syndicate began the most business-like search of all. Trouble developed when the authorities of Costa Rica, which claims Cocos, got wind of their doings. Shortly 75 Costa Rican policemen arrived at the island, deported the treasure hunters bag and baggage for digging without government permission. This year, when President Roosevelt went ashore, the expedition was back again. The British were keeping an eye out for the treasure and a detachment of Costa Rican police were keeping an eye out for the British.

During his three days at Cocos, the President caught a 110-lb. sailfish in a 40-minute light, was visited aboard ship by the treasure hunters who explained the progress of their scientific search. In all seriousness, the man who has dug up and dispensed 15 billion dollars of the U. S. treasure since March 4, 1933 gave his best advice on how the Britons should go about locating the Cocos cache.

That done, the President steamed away on the cruiser Houston for the mainland at Bahia Honda, Panama. There he got the first mail he had seen since leaving San Diego, Calif, ten days before, stopped for more fishing in the Gulf of Panama.