First of all, thirty men never went out west, discovered a vein of gold, and worked a mine in the region described. Today we know this to be fact. So there's the first author deception. The second author deception comes around when he presents the cleat text for C2 and the corresponding key which doesn't exactly work as he details. The third deception comes when the author details how the ciphers had no order and that he numbered them by their length, length alone having absolutely no bearing in determining which of the remaining ciphers is 1 or 3? Deception four, errors in the letters. Deception five, in those letters the writer details that "a key" will be required to decode the ciphers, this being easy to do with "the key", but the same key that sort of works for C2 produces only gibberish when applied to C1 & C3.
So, in all of the above what did the author tell his reads that was accurate/correct? "Nothing!" And yet people still believe the author......

.....even after he warns them against doing that very thing, and even after he avoided claiming that his story was true by only suggesting that the story contained his personally authentic statements. Deception six, then the author refuses to identify himself.....

Wonder why?