Among other lesser tales from L. Ron Hubbard’s Caribbean Motion Picture Expedition, was an evening spent in the port of San Juan, Puerto Rico, hearing stories of alluvial gold in the Puerto Rican hinterland. Add to such tales, the fact that this first Caribbean voyage had finally cost him dearly, and that his father had long dreamed of augmenting his Lieutenant’s pay with a mining venture and a bit of investment capital from like-minded officers. Together, these are the makings of Mr. Hubbard’s second voyage into the southern latitudes.

Commencing in the autumn of 1932, the expedition saw L. Ron Hubbard “prospecting in the wake of Conquistadores,” as he sluiced inland rivers and crisscrossed the island in search of elusive gold.

“It was terribly hot and we were soaking wet most of the time,” he remarked in a later account, and all was initially for naught. Such a venture also courted considerable danger, such as the incident—later recounted in Argosy magazine—wherein Mr. Hubbard was literally buried alive while squeezing through an abandoned mine shaft.

On the other hand, while that legendary lode of gold never surfaced, the venture did turn out profitable, with the staking of claims to silicon, manganese and several lesser ores. Not only that, but it was the first complete mineralogical survey of Puerto Rico under United States jurisdiction.

Perhaps most importantly, L. Ron Hubbard also conducted much ethnological work amongst the interior villages and native hillsmen—with particular regard to their mixture of Catholicism and voodoo, called espiritismo.

As for how that work figures into Mr. Hubbard’s greater journey of discovery to Dianetics and Scientology, is the following excerpt from a December 1932 letter to a friend, composed from within the curious interior of the island:

“...how can we understand that outside us when we can barely realize that which goes on within?”