In the swamp, Rick and Marty Lagina join archaeologists Dr. Aaron Taylor, Miriam Amirault, and Liz Michels as the team traces the stone pathway further into the uplands near the eastern border of the triangle-shaped swamp. With over 400 feet of cobblestone now exposed, surveyor Steve Guptill measures the newly uncovered section and confirms its elevation at 1.5 feet above sea level, perfectly consistent with earlier stretches. Aaron discovers a notched leather strap lodged deep between cobblestones, and Rick pulls a fragment of red earthenware pottery from the feature. Aaron performs the tongue adhesion test, confirming the piece is porous earthenware rather than stoneware, and notes such crude ceramics were typical of the earliest European presence in Nova Scotia, potentially dating to 1604 or earlier with possible Spanish or Portuguese origins. The near-total absence of other artifacts along the road strikes the team as significant: unlike the Samuel Ball site, whoever built this pathway appears to have cleaned up after themselves.
On Lot 25, metal detection expert Gary Drayton and Rick conduct a supervised surface investigation of a Samuel Ball foundation, made possible through a heritage permit arranged by archaeologist Laird Niven. Gary recovers a lead splash consistent with musket ball manufacturing, a curved nonferrous object he calls a top-pocket find, and a single-loop flat button dating to roughly 1750 to 1850 that may carry a military insignia linking it to Ball'\''s era on the island.
Charles Barkhouse and Doug Crowell travel 60 miles northeast to the Dawson Print Shop in Halifax to consult leather and rare documents expert Joe Landry about the notched strap. Joe identifies the piece as thick cowhide and rules out a watch strap, suggesting instead that it may be a closure from a bound ledger or ship'\''s log, a style he encountered on European books from the 1500s and 1600s. The assessment connects to a document Doug discovered three years earlier: a copy of a log from the 1746 Duc d'\''Anville expedition describing the burial of a vast treasure in a deep pit with a tunnel from the shore on a wooded island in Nova Scotia. Joe recommends tannin analysis, noting that blackthorn, a common European tanning agent, could confirm a non-North American origin.
In the Money Pit area, Scott Barlow, geologist Terry Matheson, and Paul Troutman drill borehole C-4.5, two and a half feet west of C-5, and strike a solid beam at 87.5 feet, the same depth where tunnel evidence appeared the previous week. The feature extends to roughly 92 feet, a four-foot collapsed section that Terry identifies with certainty as tunnel. A subsequent borehole, BC-3, positioned northwest of C-1, produces two and a half feet of solid wood at 88 to 89 feet, further corroborating the pattern. In the War Room, Craig Tester presents carbon-14 results from the C-5 tunnel wood: two date ranges of 1726 to 1813 and 1648 to 1694. The earlier window places construction nearly 150 years before the Money Pit'\''s discovery, and Jack Begley, Alex Lagina, and the rest of the team agree to continue drilling west to define the tunnel and locate its source.
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