If only this old whiskey bottle could talk.

What a tale it could spin from its perch at the bottom of the Niagara River, about the old days, almost a century ago, when alcohol was the only thing smuggled across the U.S.-Canada border.

Two months ago, Rich Campbell of Akron was diving in the river when he happened upon the clear bottle, sticking out of the silt and mud about 26 feet below the surface.

The bottle was intact, corked and full of whiskey.

Thus began the mystery of where this bottle came from and what led to its presumably being tossed overboard or cut loose from a boat smuggling whiskey into America during Prohibition.

It all began July 10 while Campbell, 44, was on the second of his two hourlong dives with the Discover Diving group.

He was drifting along near the bottom of the river, watching the fish and scenery pass by, when he saw something about half an hour into his second dive, between the International Railroad Bridge and the South Grand Island Bridges.

"I saw the top of a bottle sticking up," he said. "I knew it was old, because I saw the cork. It was buried in the mud. There was probably an inch or two sticking up."

Campbell knows a buried treasure when he sees one. So he grabbed onto a nearby rock, to keep from drifting past his catch.

"I started digging with my hands, as fast as I could, before the current pushed me away," he said.

As soon as he grabbed the bottle and began drifting away, Campbell was sure of two things:

"I knew it was full, and I knew it wasn't full of water."

Later, as he came back toward the surface, the pressure of his ascent led to a small hairline crack in the bottle.

"It was oozing a little liquid, so we were tasting it," he said Tuesday. "It tasted like real smooth Black Velvet whiskey."

The bottom of the bottle is embossed with a brand, Gooderham & Worts, and the cork has the word "Toronto" on it.

A little bit of digging -- the investigative kind -- later revealed that Gooderham & Worts was a prominent Toronto-based distillery that went by that name between 1862 and 1923.

That means this bottle could date from way before the birth of anyone currently on this planet.

But that's not the most likely scenario.

"My guess is that they were smuggling Prohibition whiskey into Buffalo, and they were getting busted, so they cut it loose, and it sank to the bottom," Campbell said.

"I'm no historian, but I'm 99 percent sure it's from the Prohibition. Why would anyone throw out a good bottle of whiskey?"

Campbell is amazed, both at his finding a corked bottle full of whiskey and at the bottle surviving intact for so long.

"It's been sitting in the same spot between America and Canada for 80 or 90 years," he said. "It went all that time, over winters and summers, and it survived."

Now that it has survived this long, Campbell is treating his little treasure with kid gloves. He has it sitting in a vase of water on his kitchen table, almost like a shrine, to make sure the cork doesn't dry out.

He'd like to consult with someone from the Buffalo Museum of Science or some expert on bottles to learn the best way to preserve his find.

What does Campbell plan to do with his treasure?

One idea, perhaps a bit tongue-in-cheek, is to have a Prohibition party, charge a fee for each shot of whiskey and donate the proceeds to charity.

Campbell then got a bit more serious.

"If they ever develop the waterfront, I could donate it, and they could put it on display," he said. "I think people would like to see a bottle from the Prohibition era still holding whiskey."

Campbell has been told that the bottle could fetch somewhere between $300 and $500 from collectors.

"I would rather keep it or donate it," he said. "I won't open it and drink it -- unless I find another one."

gwarner@buffnews.comnull