"Diamonds! Rubies! Sapphires!
Emeralds!
A dazzling cataract of flashing
stones poured, pell-mell, out of the mouth of the open sack
which Harpending was holding upside down, and spilled themselves
in shimmering pools of green, red, blue, and white upon his
sheet covered billiard table.
It was an amazing, unforgettable
sight! Phosphorescent pools of liquid fire glimmering and glowing
in the dim light of Harpending’s billiard room.
The stones were of different
sizes. Some yellow, black, and white diamonds were small, others
were larger than dice. For one of the latter, one of 103 carats,
Shreve and Co. of San Francisco had already made an offer of
$96,000. Besides that huge jewel, there was a sapphire as large
as a pigeon’s egg; emeralds as round as gooseberries;
a ruby that might have fallen out of a heathen idol’s
eye. All too valuable for anything but a royal crown. All these
gems were lying on Harpending’s billiard table, flashing,
glowing, burning, in luminous splendor. Ralston and Roberts,
Harpending, Rubery and Lent, stunned at the spectacle of so
much wealth, looked in open-mouthed amazement."
—Continue
researching the Great Diamond Hoax of 1872
