The daily gazette., 1878-08-28
Philip ArnoId's Fight.
The Promoter Of the Great
diamond Scheme Severe
ly Wounded.
FATAL SHOOTING IN NELIzABETHTowN
KY.-How THE Ex-cALIFoRNIAN
HAS BECOME BANKER AND
ESTEEMED CITIZEN
GENERALLY.
LOUISVILLE. Ky. Ann o2

| "P h'hoiu, Ihe man who engineer
ed the great diamond scheme of 1871 o
to success, lies in his beautiful home Mt
Ehzabethtown, this State, with a load of
buckshot in his right breast and shoul-
der' Arnold has been out of the public
eye since Lent and Ralston compromised
their suit against him for $50, 900 cash.
yet he has made himself prominent
man among his neighbors, and his bank
is the most fourishing in that section of
Kentucky. He entertains largely, his
stable is noted for its fast stock, and his
fruit farm is the boast of Hardin county.
Though he got his wound in the course
OF promiscuous street fight, and though
another citizen, passive bystander. was
perhaps mortally wounded by a shot from
Arnold's pistol, fancy that no very yie-
orous prosecution will be made against
him.
1t is hard to say lust why the man has
come to be in such fair repute among a
people who are not apt to condone crime
OF the Arnold sort. They forgive too
easily violence, but they abhor dishonesty
or the suspicion of dishonesty. Perhaps
it was the very daring of it that found
favor in the Kentucky heart. Its details
are not so freshly remembered bv the
country at large as had the Credit Mobi-
her and the Beknap revelations and
| that greater national crime of all never
been and it is NOT, therefore, so queer
that Kentucky should not keep them in
mind.
And it was the most daring swindle
since George Laws South Sea scheme.
Besides, Arnold was a Kentucky boy,
and his neighbors at Ehzabethtown, who
knew his respectable father before him,
fancy that Arnold's scheme may not have
been so black as 1t was painted, and they
give him the benefit of the doubt He
was hatter's apprentice in Elizabeth
town, but went to California when a lad.
What he did during the interval is not
clearly known, but he suddenly appear
ed in EliZabethtown six or seven wears
ago and opened big account in the To-
cal bank; but before that il had been re-
ported that he had discovered new
Golconda, somewhere among the Wes-
tern mountains, and was only in Ken
lucky TO eI JOY some part of the millions
he had gained. Then after awhile came
the exposure. j. b. Cooper, the San
francisco bookkeeper, made oath that
Arnold had planned the swindle and had
persuaded him to help nit. Arnold sail
ed for London with some SAC, 200 in his
pocket On board the vessel he had
bribed two sailors with $500 apiece to go
out among the London jewellers on their
arrival there and purchase what they
could of diamonds in the rough. In this
way he got together S37 900 worth of
cheap stones-somethiug like bushel of
tnem-and sailed back again for San
Francisco. Several months later George
ID. Roberts, Gen. Georges S Dodge, VIII
liam NJ. Lent, and William Raston, all
notable among the wealthy Spectators
of California, were succe ssively let into
the tremendous secret that Arnold and
one Slack-also from Elizabethtown, and
playfellow of Arnold's when a boy
while prospecting in the mountains, had
stumbled upon valley in which dia-
monds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and
gems Of all kinds and values were to be
picked up as pebbles along the ocean
beach. They had brought back with
them all that they could carry, and bag
full of the jewels would be emptied be-
fore the astonished beholder AT Rob-
ert's house, Gen. Dodge said that they
covered one end of the billiard table ali
inch deep.
These California fnauciers invested a
large sum almost at the first sight of the
,lt
went on to New York and laid their
scheme for forming stock company
with S10,000000 capital before certain
chosen rich men of the metropolis. These
We're Mr.. S. l.. NJ Barlow, Mr. August
Belmont, and Mr.. Charles Tiffany, of the
great jewelry firm. Arnold had brought
his bushel of gems with him and carried /
them from the Fifth Avenue Hotel to |
Mr.. Barlow's office and back again wrap |
ned in brown and that ami n N |
little red bag. They were daily spread |
out on the office table, and Mr.. Tiffany |
was intristed with some of them to test. |
He was increduleus, for, as he said, there |
was a curious diversity in the Jewels 10 |
have all come from the same locality. |
Mr.. Belmont also fought shy of invest
ment, but Mr.. Barlow, Gen. Mcclellan, |
and perhaps others in New York bought |
from S50000 to $780, 900 of the stock.
An expedition, equipped with arms,
provisions, and baggage for sixty days
trip rendeZvoused at Denver, Colorado. |
Henry Janin, the best known and most |
trusted export on the California coast,
had been engaged to snperintend the in
vestgation, and with Gen. Dodge, Har-
pending, another California capitalist
who had large block of diamond shares;
Arnold and a young Englishman named
Rubery, started from Denver May 2S,
1872, out into the wilderness. Arnold
had positively declined to give even IA
hint of where his mesa might be, and, at
the head of the column, led the explor-
ers through a inc st devious and puzzling
course. They travelled nine days, and
then Arnold told them they We're on the
spot. Afterward they learned that they
were really but thirty miles or so from
the point of departure.
But in the valley their widest hopes
seemed fulfilled. Every member of the
expedition found jewels for the trouble
of picking them out of the hard clay.
Arnold and Slack always being at hand
to direct the exact spot to look for them.
They spent seven days in the valley, and
gathered together about 1000 carats of
diamonds and 5000 oarats of rubes,
amethysts, and other precious stones.
Then they started back for New York,
and there Janin's enthusiastic report on
the apparently exhaustless value of the
"find" was prepared, and made great
sensation among the shareholders both
in your city and in San Francisco.
Arnold had already been paid 100000
on account of only portion of his share
in the original discovery, and was promi-
sed S150,000 more in case of favorable
report by .Janin. Lent and Ralston, 1T