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Another of the young men was Clarence Rivers King, who proposed to Congress that the resources along the
line of the new transcontinental railroad ( the Union Pacific and Central Pacific) should be explored and studied.
This survey was intended to cover a belt of country on each side of the railroad, approximately along the Fortieth
Parallel from Wyoming to California.
King's organization was the aristocrat of the Surveys. It was staffed largely by men trained at Yale or Harvard,
many of whom had gone on for advanced study in German universities. It is related that, later on, when all the
Surveys had been combined into a single U.S. Geological Survey, the men of the former King Survey would not speak
to those of the former Powell and Hayden Surveys if they met them on the street--these were too plebeian to be
noticed.
King himself, in his day, must have been a very dynamic and charming man. His enthusiasm for geology and his way
of presenting the facts of science to laymen made him the friend of important people in Washington--Senators, Congressmen,
and many others. King's most spectacular achievement was really a side issue of the Fortieth Parallel Survey itself,
and had to do with the "great diamond swindle."*
In 1872 two weatherbeaten prospectors, Philip Arnold and John Slack, came out of the mountains and presented themselves
to William Ralston, president of the Bank of California in San Francisco. They showed him a bag of diamonds which
they had collected at some remote spot in the West. They came at a psychological time, for a speculative madness
had taken over San Francisco after the opening of the Comstock Lode. Every day brought disclosures of new mineral
deposits in the West--of gold, silver, and the baser metals. The Kimberley diamond fields had been opened in South
Africa only a few years before. Could there not be similar deposits in western North America? Ralston, a great
plunger and speculator who had made a fortune in the Comstock mines, was greatly excited, and made up his mind
to gain control of the new diamond
deposit.
After some persuasion the prospectors consented to have their find examined on the spot, provided the inspectors
were brought to it blindfolded. The inspectors came back even more impressed than Ralston--diamonds were all over
the place, as well as rubies, sapphires, and emeralds--on the surface of the ground, in ant hills, in crevices
in the rocks. A sample of the stones collected by them was submitted to Tiffany's in New York and Mr. Tiffany personally
valued the sample alone as worth $150,000. The prospectors reluctantly sold their claim for $360,000, with a stock
interest which they sold in turn for $300,000, a return of $660,000 in all.
The San Francisco group then organized the San Francisco & New York Mining & Commercial Co. to develop
the deposit, capitalized at $10,000,000. All the stock could easily have been sold to the avid public in San Francisco,
but instead it was offered to twenty-five of the outstanding business and financial leaders of the city.
It was at this point that Clarence King entered the picture. Returning from field work in Nevada in the fall of
1872, he learned of the new discovery which rumors placed at such widely separated points as Arizona, New Mexico,
and Utah. He wondered whether the deposit lay within the area covered by his Fortieth Parallel Survey, and whether
it had somehow been overlooked during investigations of the survey.
"Feeling that so marvelous a deposit as the diamond fields must not exist within the official limits
of the Fortieth Parallel Survey, unknown and unstudied, I availed myself of the intimate knowledge possessed by
the gentlemen of my corps, not only of Colorado and Wyoming, but of the trail of every party traveled there, and
was enabled to find the spot without difficulty."
This turned out to be in the northern foothills of the Uinta Mountains, only a short distance south of the Union
Pacific Railroad. Going to the place, King observed that it lay in a region of tilted sedimentary rocks without
any evidence of igneous intrusion or mineralization; besides, the association of diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and
emeralds seem incongruous. He found that most of the stones lay on the surface; none were embedded in the rocks
themselves, and some even bore marks resulting from the work of jewelers! Tiffany's appraisal to the contrary,
the stones were very inferior--mere jewelers' waste that had been bought up and planted for purpose of fraud. Bit
by bit, contrary to his expectations, King was forced to conclude that Ralston and his friends had fallen into
a trap.
Once having made up his mind, King traveled night and day to San Francisco and demanded of Ralston and the Bank
of California that sales of stock be stopped at once, announcing that he intended to publish his findings. All
Hell must have broken loose over the head of this young government geologist, for he was facing up to some of the
richest and most powerful men in California. But he stood his ground and the company collapsed.
That was the beginning of the end for poor Ralston, whose bank failed in the panic of 1875, and he ended as a suicide
in the waters of the Golden Gate. The prospectors disappeared, but Arnold was eventually traced to Kentucky where,
on threat of lawsuit, he surrendered $150,000 of his ill-gotten gains.
*Many accounts of this famous incident have been published, each varying somewhat in details. In order
to make a consistent story I have had to pick and choose from several sources."
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