The Times deserves very great credit 'for its action in
the matter of the great Diamond Swindle. A knot of adventurers at San Fran- cisco bought a quantity of rough diamonds and rubies in Hatton Garden, sowed them about a Californian mountain side, and told a raisin engineer to report on the locality. He reported, of course, that diamonds were as thick as peas, capitalists were informed in strictest secrecy, and a regular mania set in for buying the new Roc's Valley. In New York and San Francisco companies were organised for baying the land at scores of thousands the acre, and the speculators would, but for the Times, have netted more than ten millions sterling. The Times, however, faced the law of
selected Golconda instead of these deserts as the scene of opera- tions they would have won the game. It is a curious fact in con- nection with this swindle, that it has cost the Cape some hundreds of thousands of pounds, having depreciated the value of diamonds in Griqualand by nearly 20 per cent. for several months.
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