THE GREAT MOGUL.                        215
	them with so much attention and leisure that I can assure the reader that the description which I have given is very exact and faithful, as also of the stones which I had time enough to contemplate." Here absolutely ends the history of this mag­nificent gem. What became of it no one knows. Whether it was lost in the sack of Delhi, or car­ried off by Nadir Shah along with the Koh-i-nur, it is impossible to say, or even to conjecture with any degree of plausibility. No account of this grand diamond, however, would be complete without some reference to the extraordinary myths which have gathered around it. There is scarcely another large diamond of no matter what size, or what color, or what shape, that has not sometime, or by somebody, been declared to be the Great Mogul. Its subsequent history seems to be the happy hunting-ground of the foolish theories of writers on precious stones. Men who write carefully enough about other diamonds, launch out into the wildest conjec­tures about the Great Mogul. They apparently