I pass on to his discovery of the highly civilised white--or rather hybrid--race hidden away in a valley of Central Asia. This would seem on the face of it to be an astonishing claim, yet when I came to weigh up the probabilities I found myself less and less confident to reject it out of hand. In the first place, Mirlees' story seems to me to be told with a plain straightforwardness that has the distinct ring of truth. Secondly, we of the outer world know practically nothing of those regions through which he travelled, and are therefore hardly in a position either to indorse or contradict any assertion regarding them. The profundity of our ignorance can perhaps be represented by an illustration. If half a dozen ants were set down at intervals on one side of Hyde Park, and crawled once to the other side, but avoided the central area altogether, their tracks might very well stand for the mere threads of country observed by the half dozen or so white men who have ever won across the barren heights of Northern Tibet; and the ants' knowledge of Hyde Park at the end of their journey would be fully as extensive as our acquaintance with that other region of the globe. Moreover, no one familiar with the writings of our greatest authorities on Central Asia--allowing that any man can be counted an authority on lands which remain to this day practically unexplored--need be reminded that among the native tribes of the lower, inhabited districts there are persistent traditions of buried and lost cities. And from what known history tells of Greek penetration into the regions around ancient Baktria--the modern Balkh--it would seem not too great a stretch of the imagination to suppose that other bands of adventurers thrown off from the main current of Alexander's advance penetrated farther east still.