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 great for its peninsular character to be easily or immediately appreciated, while the Malay Peninsula, that long and slender tongue of land projecting to the south of the continent of Asia, forces an understanding of its nature upon the least scientific and observant traveller.

In these circumstances M. Pavie's arguments seem to be impossible of acceptance, and the recent discovery in the Malayan State of Pahang—the home of apes and ivory and peafowl—of immense gold mines of very ancient date and of a workmanship that has no counterpart in southeastern Asia, supplies an ample reason for the designation of "golden" so long applied to the Chersonese. Here, hidden away under the shade of the primeval forest, are excavations which must have yielded in their time tons of the precious metal, and if Josephus spoke truly, and did not, as is more probable, merely hazard a bold conjecture, here perhaps are to be found in the heart of the Chersonesus Aurea the mines of Solomon the King. Of the race that worked them, of the slaves who toiled and suffered and died therein, we to-day possess no clue, for this, the story of the earliest exploration of a portion of southeastern Asia, is lost to us forever. Here, however, at the very outset of our enquiry, we obtain a glimpse of one of those pregnant suggestions wherewith Asia impresses our imaginations. by virtue of her antiquity, her wonder and her mystery. Hers is the land of buried story, of hidden records, of forgotten romance. The East baffles while she fascinates us: fascinates because she baffles. Sphinx-like she propounds riddles which few can answer, luring us onward