various people who had taken possession of it before Kidd's arrest (such as his wife and various others who were given it for safe keeping), there was so much public interest and fascination with the case at the time, speculation grew that a vast fortune remained and that Kidd had secretly buried it. Captain Kidd did bury a small cache of treasure on Gardiner's Island in a spot known as Cherry Tree Field; however, it was removed by Governor Bellomont and sent to England to be used as evidence against him. Over the years many people have tried to find the supposed remnants of Kidd's treasure on Gardiner's Island and elsewhere, but none has ever been found. Over the years many people have claimed to have discovered maps and other clues that led to pirate treasure, or claim that historical maps are actually treasure maps. These claims are not supported by scholars. El Dorado In 1595, the English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh set out to find the legendary city of El Dorado. Naturally, the city was never found but Raleigh wrote at length in The Discovery of Guiana about his venture to South America in which he claimed to have come within close proximity of "the great Golden Citie of Manoa (which the Spaniards call El Dorado)." Despite the fact that his narrative was quite unrealistic—it described a tribe of headless people, for example—his reputation commanded such respect that other cartographers apparently used Raleigh's map as a model for their own. Cartographer Jodocus Hondius included El Dorado in his 1598 map of South America, as did Dutch publisher Theodore de Bry. The city remained on maps of South America until as late as 1808 and spawned numerous unsuccessful hunts for the city. Treasure maps in fiction Treasure maps have taken on numerous permutations in literature and film, such as the stereotypical tattered chart with an "X" marking the spot, first made popular by Robert Louis Stevenson in Treasure Island (1883), a cryptic puzzle (in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Gold-Bug" (1843)), or a tattoo leading to a dry-land paradise as seen in the films, ‘’Yellowbeard‘’ (1983) and Waterworld (1995). Literature In literature, treasure maps like the one in H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines may serve several purposes as a plot device: Motivation, causing the characters to begin a quest. Plot exposition, explaining in a concise way where the characters must