To make sure of this, he read them a proclamation that he
had composed, which announced that General Forrest had reorganised the
shattered Southern armies and defeated the North in one pitched
battle. The negroes believed him implicitly. They passed a vote
declaring it a good thing and held revival services immediately.
Fitz-Norman himself set out for foreign parts with one hundred
thousand dollars and two trunks filled with rough diamonds of all
sizes. He sailed for Russia in a Chinese junk, and six months after
his departure from Montana he was in St. Petersburg. He took obscure
lodgings and called immediately upon the court jeweller, announcing
that he had a diamond for the Czar. He remained in St. Petersburg for
two weeks, in constant danger of being murdered, living from lodging
to lodging, and afraid to visit his trunks more than three or four
times during the whole fortnight.
On his promise to return in a year with larger and finer stones, he
was allowed to leave for India. Before he left, however, the Court
Treasurers had deposited to his credit, in American banks, the sum of
fifteen million dollars--under four different aliases.
He returned to America in 1868, having been gone a little over two
years. He had visited the capitals of twenty-two countries and talked
with five emperors, eleven kings, three princes, a shah, a khan, and a
sultan. At that time Fitz-Norman estimated his own wealth at one
billion dollars.
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