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Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3684, 15 October 1880, Page 2

Ai ingenious attempt at swindling it thus related 'by « J Home, paper :-• About threte weeks ago Mr Thomas Hollister, an ex telegraph clerk, was arrested at Sin Francisco by a Chicago detective upbnthe charge of having conspired with certain (■peculators in the Far West to create a Wall street panic in Pacific mail and mining companies stock- The method by which this projeofwas to be executed appears to hare been the offspring of Mr Hollister's fertile brain, and be had been fully empowered by his associates to pat it in prset cc, when th* whole enterprise was suddenly frustrated by his seSsure. He had conveyed a galranie battery and 4u isolated wire to a desolate spot in: too ?ierra, not far from the Battle Mountain f where he proposed to cut the service ■** wires connecting California with the. Eastern States, and by meant of his own apparatus to telegraph the following amazing dispatch to the agents of the Press Association at Chicago:—" This morning, about ten o'clock, a huge tidal ware swept orer San Francisco, destroy* , ing the entire city, and surging up farther inland until Sacramento and Stockton were flooded ten feet. deep. Simultaneously a fearful earthquake convulsed the whole State, the heaviest' shock being sustained by Virginia City and the neghbourhood. Comstock mines, com* pletely choked up. Further details of catastrophe are yet wanting." Mr Hoi. lister's enterprise would hare been carried out some days before his arrest bat for •n unexpected fall in Comstock shares, which induced his associates to postpone their coup until this particular stock should hare somewhat recovered itself. iMeanwhile the Chicago police got wind :, oi* the scheme, and ran the chief *- speeu4at or " to earth just in time to. avert oae 1 of t he " biggest things " in swindles ever I yet .devised by Transatlantic astuteness. A .few months ago a dealer in Edinburgh bought at a sale two eggs of a great aufc for 325.. A few days afterwards the tame dealer sent the eggs to London to be sold, when the oae fetched £100 and \^ 4he other 102 guineas, whioh, with one H* ,>, eeption, is the highest prioe ever known to hare been paid for one egg. Tufa exceptional ease was a wx'k egf , sold torn* years ag^at the same plaot for <** -; ...■;•",-. ■.■•