Paragraph 2

Before reading this page you should read my interpretation of paragraph 4. Both paragraph 2 and paragraph 4 are about 'Turkish dogs' and in my interpretation of paragraph 4 I explain what La Buse meant by that expression and justify my explanation in great detail. The short version would be to say that at that time 'Turkish dog' (chien turc) was a slang expression used to mean 'hairless dog' (at that time there was in Turkey a type of dog that really was hairless) and La Buse was using the phrase 'Turkish dog' to mean the many dogs in and around the Mascarene islands (now called Réunion, Mauritius and Rodrigues) that had lost their hair because they were suffering from canine scabies (sarcoptic mange).

Many people looking at this part of the text have guessed that 'shien' was 'chien' (dog) in the original cryptogram, and may people have also spotted the words 'culliere' which probably is a mis-spelling by La Buse of 'cuillère' (spoon) and 'miel' which is French for honey.  To me it seems likely that La Buse was writing about 'a spoonful of honey and sulfur' (une cullière de miel et soufre) - this means the text includes an extra symbol after 'miel' as shown in the image below. As is the case with all the embedded symbols in my interpretation, this symbol is one of the special symbols that can be interpreted either as a letter or a digit. Since it is extremely unlikely that a set of letters would all happen to be from this special group, I am inclined  think that these embedded symbols all represent numbers, but I have not yet figured out what those numbers mean, otherwise I would already be a VERY rich man. However, it is also possible that La Buse simply mis-spelt 'miel' as 'miell', in which case there would be no embedded symbol here - this is why I have shown the embedded '6' in red (I show embedded characters in black when I am very confident that the character is indeed an embedded character, probably one of the next level of clues).

As hinted previously, I solved paragraph 4 before paragraph 2, then came back to paragraph 2 confident that this paragraph was indeed also about 'Turkish dogs' (mangy dogs, in the context of the cryptogram). I did research and soon learnt that at that time the treatment for mange was based on sulfur, which I took to be a very strong indication that this paragraph is indeed about treating mangy dogs. La Buse would have been very familiar with sulfur, and pirates would have had easy access to it, since it is an ingredient of gunpowder (along with charcoal and potassium nitrate a.k.a. saltpeter). My vet confirmed to me that sulfur was indeed the standard treatment for mange, but added that nowadays more effective treatments are also available. 

Having solved those lines I looked at the next part of the cryptogram to see whether that could be a continuation of the same paragraph. I especially looked at this sequence since it seems to be largely recognisable: 'ILFAUTQOEUTTOITANOITIECOUUE'. Many people have suggested that the last part of this sequence should be interpreted as 'à moitié couvert' meaning 'half covered', and I agree with this. Many people, looking for geographical landmarks in the text, have also pointed out that the sequence contains 'toit', which in French means 'roof'.  I reject that interpretation because the sequence 'TOIT' is preceded by 'il faut que' meaning 'it is necessary that' and very often in French that phrase is followed by the word 'soit', a subjunctive form of 'être', to be. In terms of the corresponding symbols, 'soit' and 'toit' differ only by one dot, so I am very inclined to suggest that the word 'soit' should appear in the corrected sequence. The full sentence that I am proposing is 'Il faut que ça soit à moitié couvert' or 'It is necessary that it should be half covered' or simply 'It must be half covered'. This works extremely well in terms of fidelity to the original symbols - every symbol is accounted for and only 4 of 27 symbols need adjusting. It is impossible to make a sensible sentence about a 'half-covered roof' without being very unfaithful to the other symbols of the cryptogram.

But what could La Buse possibly mean by  'It must be half covered'? To make the next step, you need to be a chemist, or a chemistry teacher,  like me! As a chemistry teacher, the phrase 'half-covered' is one that I have often used with my students, for example when I tell them to burn a rolled-up strip of magnesium in a crucible. In this case, one half-covers the crucible with its lid in order to limit the availability of oxygen so that the magnesium burns in a slower, more controlled fashion. The partial covering of the crucible also reduces the likelihood of material splattering out of the crucible.  So, could La Buse have been suggesting heating the sulfur/honey mixture - is there anything in the cryptogram that could mean 'heating' and would it actually make sense to heat the mixture? And if there might be a reason to warm or heat the mixture, would it also make sense to partially cover the mixture while heating?

It would certainly not make sense to heat the mixture strongly - both the sugar and the sulfur could burn and when sulfur burns it makes poisonous, choking sulfur dioxide gas. Heating the mixture gently might make sense since that would make it less viscous and easier to apply. Would there be any reason to partially cover the mixture while gently heating it? I'm guessing that the main reason to partially cover the mixture would be to reduce the risk of choking fumes being released, even though that risk is already greatly reduced by heating the mixture gently.

So, it there a letter sequence that resembles the  French word  for heat, which is 'chauffer'? Yes! Well, sort of. Changing the symbols of CASSESUR into CHAUFFER seems like a big change but in fact this would not involve drastically changing any of the symbols, just making several small or moderate changes (no red chevrons, only green or orange chevrons below). What's more, the preceding symbols can easily be slightly modified to turn TITOUSN VPULEZOLVSPRENEZ2LETCASSESUR into 'Si vous (8) voulez, vo(6)us pouvez (2) les chauffer' which means 'If you want, you can heat them'. As usual, there seem to be some embedded symbols (8, 6, 2) which may represent the next level of clues, except that this time the '2' appears in plain text rather than as a coded symbol, which is odd. I have no suggestion as to why the digit '2' would appear twice in the cryptogram in plain text when, according to my interpretation, there are many digits which appear in the cryptogram in encoded form.

I have stressed that it would be a very bad idea to heat sulfur strongly because that could release choking, poisonous sulfur dioxide fumes. It could make sense though to heat the mixture gently so I asked myself whether there is anything in the text that could mean 'gently'. After the sequence CASSESUR (chauffer?) comes LECHEMIN. Now, if there is one thing in the cryptogram that everyone is sure of it is that LECHEMIN means 'le chemin' or 'the path' - this is the only clear landmark word in the whole cryptogram and it is THIS PATH that is going to take us to the treasure. YOOPEEE!

Now, are you ready for a surprise? The latest and greatest inspiration in my interpretation of the cryptogram was to realise that 'le chemin' and 'légèrement' (French for 'gently') sound quite similar!! Not identical, but similar - try getting a French speaker to say 'le chemin, légèrement, le chemin, légèrement' etc, 10 times and you will agree that these words sound similar. So once again we see La Buse (or whoever wrote the cryptogram) using an incorrect spelling that makes phonetic sense. Someone who had heard the word 'légèrement' but who had perhaps never seen it written down might well write it as the more familiar word or phrase: 'le chemin'. So now we have a sentence: 'Si vous voulez, vous pouvez les chauffer légèrement.' (If you want, you can heat them gently.) which makes good sense, is quite faithful to the original symbols, and ties together this whole paragraph!

Oh, and if you're thinking that all this chemistry mumbo-jumbo cannot possibly be the real content of the La Buse cryptogram then let me remind you once again that the main text is almost certainly just a matrix of nonsense lines within which there are embedded symbols which are probably the next level of clues, the clues that will guide you to the treasure (if I don't get there first...).

My interpretation is copyright July 2018.

Patate

I'm guessing that the word you like least in my interpretation is 'patate' (potato) being used to mean 'head', even though I have linked to a page (part 2c of this page) which indicates that 'patate' can indeed be used in this slang way to mean 'head'. It's easy to interpret the sequence 'KEPATAIE' in three other very plausible ways, as shown in this image below. The image shows first the 'patate' interpretation which I favour, not least because it is the most faithful to the symbols of the cryptogram:

Thus it's possible to interpret this line as follows. (As usual, spelling errors have been corrected and the embedded symbols have been omitted.)

Mettez sur la tête de la bête.             Put (it) on the animal's head.

Mettez sur la plaie de la bête.           Put (it) on the animal's wound.

Mettez sur lé pattes de la bête.        Put (it) on the animal's paws.

• The interpretation with 'tête' (head) has the problem that I needed to slightly modify the symbol for 'P' into the symbol for 'R' for consistency with my observation that all the embedded symbols are of the special type that can be interpreted either as letters or numbers, suggesting that they should in fact be interpreted as numbers since if they were all letters it is extremely improbable that they would all belong to this special group. But I also ask myself why the symbol for '9' would be the same as for 'R'. Wouldn't it be more logical for it to be the same as 'P'? If you associate the digits 1-5 with the vowels AEIOU and then associate the other digits 6-9 with the consonants beginning with L then these digits would be associated with LMNP not with LMNR. Why would '9' be associated with R rather than P? If '9' is associated with 'P' then the symbol for 'P' in the cryptogram does not need to be changed into the symbol for 'R'.

• The interpretation with 'plaie' (wound) has the problem that unless the ointment is placed on the head of the animal it is likely to be licked off and swallowed.

• The interpretation with 'pattes' (paws) also has the problem that the ointment is likely to be licked off and swallowed. Another problem with this interpretation would be the use of 'lé' instead of 'les' which is not a very plausible spelling error.

Maybe we should not be too quick to dismiss options that involve the dog actually consuming the mixture, for I have also found many references where it is clearly the intention that the animal would consume a mixture containing sulfur and honey. I give examples lower down this page.

Use sulfur to treat mange?

It's very easy to find dozens of texts, both from the time of La Buse or modern times, that indicate that sulfur was, and is, often used to treat canine scabies. For example, this site says:

Dog's Mange, which is known as Scabies in humans, is highly contagious both to humans and other pets. Dogs that are affected with sarcoptic mange usually displays these symptoms: ...

• Extreme hair loss. The affected area will be the first but when the mites spread, all the hair will be removed eventually. ...

Caution: Dogs with sarcoptic mange are highly contagious. Protect yourself! ...

SULFUR soap - Home Remedy to get rid of Mange.

Correction to the above text: I understand that canine mange cannot survive for more than a few days on humans, but that it can cause strong itching during that time.

The 1805 book 'A Dictionary of the Veterinary Art' includes a recipe based on sulfur for treating mange in dogs and other animals:

This site also recommends sulfur soap to treat scabies (mange), though it is referring to human scabies rather than the canine variety.

In the 1717 text 'Pharmacopée Universelle, Contenant Toutes Les Compositions De Pharmacie' we read:

One will pulverise subtly ammoniac salt, 'verd de gris' (copper carbonate), dry pigeon droppings, soot and the sulfur; one will mix these powders and oils to make an ointment, which one will keep as needed. It is suitable for drying and curing ringworm, one puts a patch of it on the head.

Note that ringworm, like mange, can also cause dogs to lose their hair.

Mix honey with sulfur?

Having established that sulphur was (and still is)  often used to treat canine scabies, we have to ask whether it would make sense to mix it with honey to make an ointment. Sulfur powder won't stick well to a dog of course - so it does need to be mixed with a viscous liquid to make an ointment. Is there some reason why honey would work better than some other viscous fluid, apart from the fact that it's widely available? Yes! Honey has well-documented antibacterial properties!

• This site says 'The medicinal importance of honey has been documented in the world's oldest medical literatures, and since ancient times, it has been known to possess antimicrobial property as well as wound-healing activity. The healing property of honey is due to the fact that it offers antibacterial activity, maintains a moist wound condition, and its high viscosity helps to provide a protective barrier to prevent infection. Its immunomodulatory property is relevant to wound repair too.'

• This site says 'Not only is honey anti-bacterial, but it is antiviral and anti-fungal. These properties alone make it more powerful than conventional antibiotics.'

• This article '13 Incredible Home Remedies for Mange in Dogs' suggests several remedies including both honey and sulfur! About honey it says 'Applying honey to your dog’s skin will help to soothe their irritated areas as well as fight the mange on your dog. The honey will instantly suffocate any mange and mange larvae present on your dog’s skin. In addition, the honey will also promote healing in the skin. Just be sure your dog does not lick it off, otherwise, it won’t work!' About sulfur it says 'Sulphur is often used in a wide variety of skin conditions of cats and dogs. It will work to suffocate the mange present on your dog while promoting healing of the skin. Sulphur will also help with any discharge or infection your dog may have that has been caused by the mange.'

• This article 'Top 11 Effective Home Remedies for Mange in Dogs' also suggests several remedies including both honey and sulfur! For honey it says 'Organic honey is excellent for treating mange for dogs and puppies. It is a natural humectant that can help soothes the scabs and relieves the itchiness of your dog's reddened flaking skin. Just apply the organic honey directly onto your dog's affected areas. The downside of using honey is the attraction of other pests like ants and bees. You will want to monitor your dog, keep him inside, and wipe the honey off at night.' 

• This article 'How to Treat Canine Mange Naturally' proposes several cures including honey: 'Honey has astonishing antiseptic, antioxidant, and cleansing qualities. Apply raw honey to affected areas.'

• This article '12 Home Remedies for Mange in Dogs' says 'Honey helps to treat and cure mange in a number of ways. First of all, the viscous nature of honey forms a thick layer on the skin of your dog and cuts off air supply which suffocates the parasites and prevent them from reproducing. Honey also provides a soothing effect on the inflamed areas and reduces itching and soreness. Honey moisturizes the skin and prevents flaking. The rich stores of organic compounds in honey stimulate the healing process. '

• This article 'Mange On Dogs: Everything You Need To Know About It' says 'Honey can be applied directly to your dog’s skin but needs to be wiped off at night as it will attract ants who may bite your dog. '

• This site says (in French) 'to get rid of a passing indigestion, what one normally calls a 'liver crisis': drink every morning for about 10 days a glass of cold water mixed with a soup spoon of honey and 5 grams of sulfur.' This shows that even today people are still mixing honey and sulfur for health reasons, though in this case it is to be swallowed to treat indigestion.

By now you should be more than convinced that both sulfur and honey are widely used to treat canine scabies (mange). Mixing them together to make an ointment therefore makes good sense, provided the dog is not able to lick off the honey and provided the mixture is removed after a while before ants start feeding on the honey. Perhaps it is even conceivable that the presence of the sulfur would make the honey unattractive to ants? Putting a medication on an animal's head, as suggested in the cryptogram, is a normal way of ensuring that the animal cannot lick the medication - as a cat owner I often apply medications to my cats in this way.

As previously suggested, it is possible also that the intention was for the animal to lick off the ointment and swallow it - some treatments involving the swallowing of sulfur and honey are given below.

The above references are to modern day uses of sulfur and honey to treat canine mange. Could I find any ancient texts that proposed treatments involving both honey and sulfur. Yes, but ancient texts are much rarer than modern ones on the net, and the recipes I found are not necessarily for the treatment of mange and not necessarily all for animals, though some are:

This text below from  'A Dictionary of the Veterinary Art' (1805) includes the description of how a mixture of sulfur and honey was used to cure 'glanders' in a horse:

The same book mentions literally dozens of other veterinary recipes with honey and sulfur!

This text below from 1838, 'Domestic Medicine, Or A Treatise on the Prevention and Cure of Diseases, by Regimen and Simple Medicines', proposes a cure for worms in humans that includes sulfur and honey:

This text below from 1770, Encyclopedie oeconomique ou systeme generale d'oeconomie rustique ... 2. d'oeconomie domestique ... [et] 3. d'oeconomie politique (etc.) says:

...  Quand les pustules commenceront à se sécher, il faudra purger l'animal avec une cuillerée de fleur de soufre & autant de crocus metallorum, deux cuillerées de miel, ...

When the pustules begin to dry, the animal must be purged with a spoonful of sulfur flower and the same amount of crocus metallorum, two spoonfuls of honey, ...

This text below from 1787, Cours complet d'agriculture théorique, pratique, économique et de médecine rurale et vétérinaire, says:

Bol dépuratoire. Prenez fleurs de soufre, une once ; mercure doux, deux gros ; antimoine diaphorétique non lavé, quatre gros ; miel commun, suffisante quantité pour incorporer ces substances et en faire un bol que vous donnerez le matin, l'animal étant à jeun.

Depurative bowl. Take flowers of sulfur, one ounce; sweet mercury, two 'gros'; uncleaned diaphoretic antimony, four 'gros'; common honey, sufficient quantity to incorporate these substances and make a bowl that you will give in the morning, the animal having an empty stomach. (N.B. a 'gros' is an ancient unit of mass)

Half cover while gently heating?

My interpretation of this paragraph finishes with 'If you want, you can heat it gently. It must be half covered.' You may not be convinced that chemists often do partially cover chemicals when heating them, so I would like to show you an example. This page is a description of an experiment involving the partial covering of the mixture while heating.  It also confirms that heating sulfur can release very unpleasant fumes. However, it is certainly not identical to the cryptogram's gentle heating of sulfur + honey for in this case it is the strong heating of copper + sulfur to produce copper sulfide. it does  Here is an excerpt:

THE SYNTHESIS OF COPPER SULFIDE

When heated together, copper and sulfur combine to form a sulfide of copper. In this assignment, you will heat a known mass of copper with excess sulfur in a covered crucible to produce the nonvolatile copper sulfide. The excess sulfur vaporizes to form gaseous sulfur, which escapes from the crucible. When the hot sulfur gas reaches the air, it reacts with oxygen to produce gaseous oxides of sulfur (mainly sulfur dioxide, SO2).  Thus only the copper sulfide remains in the crucible.  ... Add just enough powdered sulfur to cover the coil of copper, but do not make the crucible more than half full of sulfur. Place a crucible cover slightly askew on the top of the crucible, and very slowly heat the crucible on a wire triangle IN THE HOOD. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU HEAT THE MIXTURE AT YOUR LAB BENCH, THE GASES GIVEN OFF ARE POISONOUS! 

Other notes

KOR TFILTT corrects to 'Por traité'?

Looking at my interpretation above, and at the accompanying colored chevrons that indicate the extent to which I had to modify the symbols in order to get a plausible text, you will note that once again my interpretation is very faithful to the original symbols, with few red chevrons to indicate otherwise. However, there is a concentration of chevrons, red and otherwise, under the first 9 symbols where I 'correct' KOR TFILTT to 'Por traité'.  Therefore I am less confident that this 'correction' is 'correct'. But at the present time this is the best correction I can propose, and in a sense the unreliability of this tiny part of my interpretation only highlights the fidelity and plausibility of the rest. I do not claim that my interpretation is perfect, only that it represents the best, most faithful and most plausible interpretation of the cryptogram that has ever been made!

'Pour ' or 'Por'?

It is also not very plausible to mis-spell 'pour as 'por' but on the other hand we see the same mis-spelling in paragraph 3, which makes this error more plausible. The error of writing traité instead of traiter is much more plausible since this confusion of er/ez/é (all  of these are phonetically identical in French) appears in many other locations within the text. 

CASSE

My interpretation of this paragraph includes the interpretation of LETCASSESURLECHEMIN as 'les chauffer lechemin (légèrement'). In other words I have rejected the standard interpretation which would be something like LES CASSE SUR LE CHEMIN (the CASSE on the path). However, in my research I did learn that CASSE may refer to the dried bark of the cassia tree. It is known as fake cinnamon or Chinese cinnamon. It is sold as cinnamon in most industrialized countries ... a legacy of 17th century spice importers who were able to make a profit by selling at a high price a product that was similar to, but inferior to, real cinnamon.

Much more interestingly, I read on this page that 'casse' was used in ancient French to mean:

• Coffret destiné à conserver papiers et objets précieux. (A coffer destined to conserve papers and precious objects)

• Trésor personnel d'un prince ou d'un souverain. (The personal treasure of a prince or sovereign.)

The page indicates that in modern French the word 'cassette' rather than 'casse' would be used. Obviously it is very tempting to interpret the sequence 'CASSE' in the cryptogram to have one of these meanings, since they seem so relevant to treasure, but as you know, I have chosen a different interpretation.

CULLIERE

It is assumed that CULLIERE is a mis-spelling of 'cuillère', spoon, but my research revealed that 'cullière' actually exists, or did exist, as a word in its own right in French, with at least two other meanings:

• a pair of forceps

• the back of a horse

I won't go into details about these possible meanings because I reject them as possible interpretations of the cryptogram, but I present here some references that you can follow up if you wish:

• HERE you can see 'culliere' used to mean forceps.

• HERE and HERE we can see 'cullière' being used to refer to the back of a horse.

PRENEZ or POUVEZ?

In my interpretation I suggest that the sequence 'PRENEZ' should be 'corrected' to 'POUVEZ', even though 'PRENEZ' is a perfectly recognisable French word meaning 'take'. You're probably not too happy about this 'correction' to a word which makes it less faithful to the original symbols, and I'm not happy either, but I have to make the correction because POUVEZ makes much better sense than PRENEZ in the context of my interpretation.