The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-01-06
THE FAMOUS DIAMOND sw1NDLE.
Which Was Exposed by the Late
 Clarence King. the Geologist.

Which Was Exposed by the Late
 Clarence King. the Geologist.
 One very notable and and highly
 sensational result of MT. Kings work
 on the 40th parallel exploration, and
 one which gave him much fame both in
 this country and elsewhere, was his
 startling discovery of the great swindle
 in the "salted" diamond fields of
 Wyoming late in 1872 Early in that
 year it had been noised abroad that a
 great find Of diamonds and other
 precious stones had been discovered
 somewhere in the far West, presuma-
 bly in Arizona, although the precise locality was most carefully concealed.
 A large number of the gems, of un- occasionally desirable value, had been carried from the alleged fields to san
 Francisco and New York, where the most influential capitalists, who had been led to believe the favorable re- ports thus far presented, had invested large sums of money in the purchase of the ground said to be diamond bearing, and were preparing for the intended operation of the so-called mines on large scale, which would soon have caused rush of fortune hunters and adventures comparable to the Cali fornia immigration In AZ and 30. Through information gained by one of his assistants, it suddenly came to MT. Kings knowledge that the locality of the alleged diamond find was not in Arizona, but in Wyoming, and really within the region of his own field work of the 40th parallel survey. Not then suspecting fraud, but on the contrary having good reason to regard as trust worthy the favorable reports of one or more well known engineers, who, shortly before, had visited the fields with the leading promoters of the enterprise. Mr. King hastened to the designated locality, not with the eN- pectation of unearthng a swindle, but for the purpose of studying the new diamond field and making his official report on what then seemed to be a discovery of great national importance.
 He set out promptly with two or three assistants, and duly reached his destination, following the trail without difficulty from a station of the Union Pacific railroad in Wyoming. He soon 1Ounu Cl1l1OlluS anu ihliltS lil dhulii- ance, but his suspicious were quickly aroused by the observation that the plainly visible precious stones lay directly upon the hard surface of rock, where nature alone could never have placed or left them, and that none could be found in the earth or on the bedrock, where, had the occurrence been genuine, the inevitable Ia WIS of nature must have carried them with the further observation that the ant-hills, built of small pebbles mined by the ants, which were found to bear rubies on their surface or in pene- trating holes (artifcially made with a small stick) invariably showed in close the storm worn footprint of mankind, while other ant-hills, without such sign of human tracks and not pierced by any artificial holes, were also without rubies or precious stones of any sort Thorough investigation, following the lines indicated by these suspicious soon proved beyond any doubt that some designing hand had ''salted" the ground with deliberate fraudulent intent.