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UNITED STATES, CANADA AND MEXICO
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37
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pleased
with their success. Another expedition, setting out late in the season,
failed to reach the fields, and was abandoned. On hearing of the
failure of the third party, Clarence King, Director of the United
States Geological Survey, started on his famous expedition, which
proved that the whole affair was a humbug and that the mine had been "
salted." The " rubies " were shown to be ordinary garnets, and the
108-carat diamond proved to be a piece of quartz. It was ascertained
that an American had purchased a large quantity of rough diamonds in
London, regardless of their value, and so plentiful was the salting
that some years afterward diamond crystals were still found there. A
number gathered by a shoemaker are still in the cabinet of Prof. Joseph
Leidy, of the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia. So carefully
was the swindle planned that an eastern expert was only shown a paper
of cube diamonds, a form quite rare, and peculiar to Brazil. About
$750,000, taken principally from capitalists on the California coast,
was realized by the promoters of this gigantic fraud. Had the company
employed a competent gem-expert or a gem-collecting mineralogist, no
such swindle could have occurred. The expert retained by the investors
was himself deceived, and this fact, of course, greatly facilitated
the fraud.
To
insure the finding of diamonds in a new district, one of the best
methods is to familiarize the searchers with their lustre. This can
readily be accomplished, and was once partly carried out by Dwight
Whiting, of Boston. He has suggested selling to the miners small,
imperfect diamond crystals (bort), mounted in a very inexpensive
manner, so that the entire ring or charm could be sold at from $5 to
$10. Several thousand searchers thus prepared would soon ascertain
whether diamonds really existed, and the crystal would also serve for
testing the hardness as well as the lustre of the stone.
A
geologist of North Carolina conceived the happy idea of interesting the
children of his vicinity in the search for minerals. A trifling reward
was sufficient to awaken a keen interest, so that healthful exercise
certainly, and often valuable specimens, were the result of his plan.
Some of the series of modified quartz crystals described by Prof.
Gerhard von Rath, as well as the beautiful rutiles, emeralds, and other
minerals that we are now
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