One of the most difficult operations ever performed by a diver was the recovering of the treasure sunk in the steamship “Malabar,” off Galle. On this occasion the large iron plates, half an inch thick, had to be cut away from the mail-room, and then the diver had to work through nine feet of sand. The whole of the specie on board this vessel--upward of $1,500,000--was saved, as much as $80,000 having been gotten out in one day. It is an interesting fact that from time to time expeditions have been fitted out, and companies formed, with the sole intention of searching for buried treasure beneath the sea. Again and again have expeditions left New York or San Francisco in the certainty of recovering tons of bullion sunk off the Brazilian coast, or lying undisturbed in the mud of the Rio de la Plata. [Illustration: The last look just before going down.] [Illustration: Coming up after a successful trip.] At the end of 1885, the large steamer Imbus, belonging to the P. & O. Co., sank off Trincomalee, having on board a very valuable East-India cargo, together with a large amount of specie. This was another case of a fortune found in the sea, for a very large amount of treasure was recovered. Another wreck from which a large sum of gold coin and bullion was recovered by divers, was that of the French ship “L’Orient.” She is stated to have had on board specie to the value of no less than $3,000,000, besides other treasure. A parallel case to “L’Orient” is that of the “Lutine,” a warship of thirty-two guns, wrecked off the coast of Holland. This vessel sailed from the Yarmouth Roads with an immense quantity of treasure for the Texel. In the course of the day it came on to blow a heavy gale; the vessel was lost and went to pieces. Salvage operations by divers, during eighteen months, resulted in the recovery of £400,000 in specie. Humorous scenes do not play much of a part on the ocean’s bottom, and the sublime and awe-inspiring are far more in evidence there than the ludicrous, yet even beneath the waves there are laughable scenes at times. A diver had been engaged to inspect a sunken vessel off the coast of Cuba. Arriving on the scene he discovered a number of native sponge-divers, who descend to considerable depths, diving down from their canoes to the sunken vessel trying to pick up something of value. They paid little attention to the arrival of the wrecking outfit, and did not notice the diver descend, until suddenly what seemed to them to be a horrible human-shaped monster, with an immense head of glistening copper and three big, round, glassy eyes, came walking around the vessel’s bow and made a big salaam to them. That was enough. They shot surfaceward like sky-rockets, climbed frantically into their canoes and hurriedly rowed away. What Happens When Anything Explodes?