At the same time the grand duchess appealed to Pope Leo, and the pontiff requested Catholic missionaries in South America and all over the world to search for John Orth and send immediate news of his presence to the Holy See. The _Saida_ returned to Fiume at the end of a year without having been able to accomplish anything beyond confirming the report of Don Mensilla. And in response to the pope’s letter many reports came back, but none of them resulted in the finding of John Orth. Shortly after the return of the _Saida_ the Austrian heirs of John Orth moved for the payment of his insurance, and the Hamburg Marine Insurance Company, after going through the formality of a court proceeding, paid the claim. In 1896 a demand was made on two banks, one in Freiburg and the other in St. Gallen, Switzerland, for moneys deposited with them by the archduke after his departure from Austria in 1889. One of these banks raised the question of the death proof, claiming that thirty years must elapse in the case of an unproved death. The courts decided against the bank, thereby tacitly confirming the contention that the end of the archduke had been sufficiently demonstrated. About two million crowns were accordingly paid over to the Austrian custodians. In 1909 the court marshal in Vienna was asked to hand over the property of John Orth to his nephew and heir, and this high authority then declared that the missing archduke had been dead since the hurricane of August 3-5, 1890. He, however, asked the supreme court of Austria to pass finally upon the matter, and a decision was handed down on May 9, 1911, in which the archduke was declared dead as of July 21, 1890, the day on which the heavy storms about the Patagonian coasts began. His property was ordered distributed, and his goods and chattels were sold. The books, instruments, art collection and furniture, which had long been preserved in the various villas and castles of the absent prince, were accordingly sold at auction in Berlin, during the months of October and November, 1912. In spite of the great care that was taken to discover the facts in this case, and in the face of the various official reports and court decisions, a great romantic tradition grew up about John Orth and his mysterious destiny. The episodes of his demotion, his marriage, his abandonment of rank, and his exile had undoubtedly much to do with the birth of the legend. Be that as it may, the world has for more than thirty years been feasted with rumors of the survival of John Orth and his actress wife. In the course of the Russo-Japanese war the story was widely printed that Marshal Yamagato was in reality the missing archduke. The story was credited by many, but there proved to be no foundation for it beyond the fact that the Japanese were using their heavy artillery in a manner originally suggested by the archduke in that old monograph which had got him disciplined.