Such was the Emma mine, famous, or rather infamous, in history. Just a little later this barren hole in the ground figured in one of the biggest swindles of modern times, in which great names were involved, a minister of the United States to England disgraced and ruined, British investors robbed out of ten million dollars, and the business world filled with such suspicion that for many years the doors of foreign credit were barred against American mining enterprise of every sort. The very character of Americans for common honesty was so seriously besmirched that it caused an international unfriendliness that time only partially cured. It was a fact of common knowledge that the mine had been bonded to Mr. Ralston and myself for $350,000. It was also well known that I had examined and must have found it unsatisfactory, for the bond was allowed to lapse. This alone gave the Emma such a black eye on the Pacific Coast, then the great market for legitimate properties, that it became almost a waste of time to make any further attempt to market it in the neighborhood where the circumstances were known. Ralston was rather noted for taking a long chance on mining ventures, and while his luck lasted he usually pulled them through. Therefore, when he and his associates turned down a developed and going concern, the wise, conservative natures shook their heads. That is doubtless why the Emma was taken to a market some five thousand miles from home for exploitation. In fact, it was practically taken off the market for quite a while. After it was first offered for sale to Ralston and myself, my impression is that I was the only one who examined it qualified to pass an honest judgment on such a property, until it suddenly blossomed on the London stock market as the great American ophir, the newly discovered treasure store, of which the human imagination had dreamed for ages--and was unloaded on the British public for $10,000,000; or, to use the parlance of our Anglo-Saxon cousins, for £2,000,000. I have gone into the early history of the Emma mine so minutely because it strikes this narrative a little later at an angle so acute that the two seem to run parallel, and it is necessary to have all the facts in hand to understand how the great swindle that strained the commercial friendship of two great peoples almost to the breaking point had a close relation to the diamond hoax story. CHAPTER XXII. BRITON WITH ORIENTAL IMAGINATION SEEKS TO LURE INVESTORS WITH TALES OF MOUNTAIN OF SILVER. _New Promotion Company Tells Truth, But Editor Samson Frightens Off Public at Critical Moment._