How so many of the shrewdest men in the world could have been absolutely duped by the great diamond fraud may well be asked. The truth is it succeeded not because of the baleful craft employed in working out its details, but because of a rawness that seemed to disarm rather than arouse suspicion and the audacity and nerve with which everything was carried out. That diamonds, rubies, emeralds and sapphires were found associated together--gems found elsewhere in the world under widely different geological conditions--was a fact that ought to have made a goat do some responsible thinking. But it seems to have been entirely overlooked by Tiffany, by Janin, by the house of Rothschild, to say nothing of Ralston, Sam Barlow, General McClellan, General Butler, William M. Lent, General Dodge, the twenty-five hard-headed business men of San Francisco who cheerfully invested $2,000,000 in the stock and the fifteen mining men who accompanied Mr. Roberts to the fields, after the San Francisco and New York Mining and Commercial Company was organized. Had serious attention ever been directed to that single point it certainly would have prompted an investigation that must have ended in exposure. Again, the Tiffany appraisement of $150,000 on not more than a tenth of the gems actually on hand is hard to comprehend, unless regarded in connection with another fact--that valuing cut stones and valuing stones in the rough are widely different matters. While the Tiffany establishment had undoubted experts as to the finished diamond, it is doubtful whether a single real expert valuer of rough diamonds was to be found in the United States. All the lapidary work of the world was then done principally in Amsterdam, with smaller establishments in Paris and London. As I understood later, the Tiffany experts satisfied themselves that the stones were actually diamonds, weighed them, estimated the cost of cutting and net weight, applied the usual rules for valuation, which increases enormously with the size of the stone, made a large deduction and let it go at that. Thus the total of $150,000 was arrived at. Knowing the immense reserves we had in San Francisco, the question of fraud probably never entered their minds. For, although much ingenuity and some money had been invested in the enterprise of palming off worthless mining properties, it seemed the height of absurdity to suppose that anyone had invested a million and a half dollars in “salt.”