Mr. King reached the diamond fields on November 2, 1872. On November 10 he was back to the railroad and sent the famous dispatch—that the company was duped.
Also he waited for Messrs. Janin, Colton, Host and Fry, the party sent from California. They went together to the diamond fields and the now plain nature of the plot was thoroughly exposed. It is not necessary to go into any of Mr. King’s geological conclusions or the entire evidence upon which the conclusion was reached. Two or three facts are enough to indicate the satisfactory nature of the proof.
Mention has been made of ant-hills sparkling with minute but veritable diamond and ruby dust. Perhaps because they were so pretty no one ever disturbed them. But if somebody had taken a notion to give one of them a kick their supposititious nature would have been apparent. They weren’t ant-hills at all. They were fakes; the work of a sinful man, not of the moral insect. They were also works of art; no one would have suspected guile from looking at them.
A close examination revealed three holes evidently made with a stick or some sharp instrument, at the bottom of each of which a gem rested. There is little doubt that all the “salting” was done in this way, except that as a rule the holes were carefully closed. But in such extensive operations a little reckless work was likely to slip in.
Finally, on the top of a large flat rock, several rubies and diamonds were found pressed into crevices to hold them in place. This was so grotesquely raw that it seems incredible, and led to a story that some of the diamonds were in the forks of trees. Unfortunately for the story, there weren’t any trees in the neighborhood.
The party returned to San Francisco late in November. On the 25th of that month the general facts were given to the press, that the diamond fields were a fraud, and that everyone had been taken in. The excitement was intense. The Associated Press kept the wires humming with the news for days, transmitting fuller reports than were published here, although the local papers printed whole pages. Wherever a printing press ran, the world knew the story of the diamond fraud.
The trustees of the San Francisco and New York Mining and Commercial Company held various meetings and a select investigating committee was appointed. W. H. L. Barnes was the company’s regular attorney. Messrs. Hall McAllister and S. M. Wilson were added to the staff to ferret out and punish those guilty of the fraud. Everyone connected with the early history of the transaction gave testimony, every line of evidence was hunted down.
MILTON S. LATHAM