own guards, had attended me in disguise during my whole visit to the
diamond mines; and that he was perfectly satisfied of my honourable
conduct. Then, after making a signal to the officer and all present to
withdraw, he bade me approach nearer to him; paid some compliments to my
abilities, and proceeded to explain to me that he stood in farther need
of my services; and that, if I served him with fidelity, I should have
no reason to complain, on my return to my own country, of his want of
generosity.

"All thoughts of war being now, as he told me, out of his mind, he had
leisure for other projects to enrich himself; and he was determined to
begin by reforming certain abuses, which had long tended to impoverish
the royal treasury. I was at a loss to know whither this preamble
would lead: at length, having exhausted his oriental pomp of words, he
concluded by informing me that he had reason to believe he was terribly
cheated in the management of his mines at Golconda; that they were
rented from him by a Feulinga Brahmin, as he called him, whose agreement
with the adventurers in the mines was, that all the stones they found
under a pago in weight were to be their own; and all above this weight
were to be his, for the sultan's use. Now it seems that this agreement
was never honestly fulfilled by any of the parties: the slaves cheating
the merchants, the merchants cheating the Feulinga Brahmin, and he, in
his turn, defrauding the sultan; so that, Tippoo assured me, he had
often purchased, from diamond merchants, stones of a larger spread and
finer water than any he could get directly from his own mines; and that
he had been frequently obliged to reward these merchants with rich
vests, or fine horses, in order to encourage others to offer their
diamonds [Footnote: Philosophical Transactions, vol. ii. p.472.] for
sale.