You may depend upon it that we were in a happy mood that night. There wasn’t the usual row over who should cook supper, who should wash the dishes, who should care for the stock, which little incidents of camp life had brought us to the verge of bloodshed during the three previous days. On the contrary, good will and benevolence were slopping over. Arnold and Slack had excellent reason to be satisfied. Mr. Janin was exultant that his name should be associated with the most momentous discovery of the age, to say nothing of the increased value of his 1,000 shares; while General Dodge, Rubery and myself experienced the intoxication that comes with sudden accession of boundless wealth. The next day prospecting was resumed and covered a wide range. Everywhere we found precious stones--principally diamonds--although a few sparklers of other kinds were interspersed. It was quite wonderful how generally the gems were scattered over a territory about a quarter of a mile square and of course we were only doing surface examination. No one could tell what depth might produce. Accounts have been published to the effect that when we arrived at the diamond fields there were visible evidences of the ground having been tampered with and disturbed. This is absolutely absurd on its face. In the first place any such evidence would have excited the suspicion of the keen-eyed Janin in a moment. Secondly, such a clumsy method of “salting” was unthinkable. Undoubtedly holes were made in the soil with sharp iron rods, gems were dropped in the holes, which were closed by a hard stamp of the foot and the first winter’s rain obliterated every trace that remained of human agency. Wherever we worked, the ground was “in place.” Two days’ work satisfied Janin of the absolute genuineness of the diamond fields. He was wildly enthusiastic. It was useless, he said, to spend more time on that particular piece of property--that was proved. The important thing was to determine how much similar land was in the neighborhood, and be able to seize on everything in sight, for Mr. Janin pointed out that this new field would certainly control the gem market of the world and that the all-essential part of the program was for one great corporation to have absolute control. So we started on a widely extended prospecting trip. Arnold and Slack did not care to go along, and, to tell the truth, we weren’t very anxious for their company. We saw much landscape, also much land that exactly resembled the formation at the diamond mine. We staked off in a rough way an enormous stretch of the country, set up notices of claims that we hoped would hold things down and covered what we believed to be the entire diamondiferous area.