Then as to his proofs. These are admittedly scanty. Yet the uncut diamonds which he sent to me were real enough and, as I found when I came to have them polished and weighed, of extraordinary value. This fact alone must be accepted as ample evidence that he had visited a region yet undiscovered by the world. As is well known, there are tracts of the wild mountainous land to the west of China where valuable minerals are found in plenty--particularly the minor precious stones such as amethyst and jade; but anything like the rich diamond field from which these magnificent stones must have come has certainly not yet been brought to light. Next, I endeavoured to find out something about the men whom Mirlees describes as having accompanied him on his adventure, paying a special visit to Shanghai for this purpose. At the Consular offices I discovered that a British subject named Stephen Poyning had indeed been registered as a newcomer to China but very shortly before the time when Mirlees' narrative begins; and some months later an Indian Army friend employed in the Intelligence Department at Delhi, to whom I had written for information, replied that there _was_ a Major Poyning who had mysteriously vanished from his regiment on the frontier some years before. Of the man known as Saunders Philipson I was able to collect several scraps of hearsay. Most of the evidence represented him as a person of wealth and extraordinary habits, believed to be profoundly versed in the languages of the East and to have spent much time travelling as a native in the interior. He had apparently shunned European society even when resident in the Treaty Ports, and what few men had known him were unanimous in describing him as a dark horse--"shady" even was the expression used by one of my informants. The manager of the Bank of Cathay told me that he had known Saunders Philipson, but not intimately, and that he believed him to be now absent on one of those long journeys up country which had been customary with him for years: beyond that, I would of course understand the affairs of his clients were not a matter he could disclose to strangers. I did not deem it discreet to push my inquiries further in that direction, but so far, I had to confess that the evidence bore out well enough the truth of Mirlees' narrative.