The valley of eyes unseen

by Gilbert Collins

The valley of eyes unseen by Gilbert Collins is a novel written in the early 20th century. It appears to be a lost-world adventure framed as a manuscript within a narrative, following Hugh Jevons, the scholar-adventurer Ronald Mirlees, and the commanding Saunders Philipson as they’re drawn into a perilous quest through China and toward Tibet. Secret societies, coded monastic lore, and hints of a hidden valley inhabited by a mysterious “ghost-faced” people and a river of diamonds set the tone. The beginning of the story has Jevons in Peking learning of Mirlees’s sudden, inexplicable death in Shanghai, then receiving a sealed box of uncut diamonds and Mirlees’s warning manuscript. Switching to Mirlees’s own account, we meet him in Shanghai, where he intervenes in an opium den assault and rescues a disguised Saunders Philipson; a brutal fight and a night-time launch chase down the Whangpu and into the Yangtze follow as they flee a ruthless secret society linked to a Tibetan monastery. In Nanking, Philipson reveals a plan to find a hidden valley beyond the Tibetan ranges, guided by a cryptic inscription carved by a dying lama that speaks of “devils of ghostly face” and a “river of white gems,” and he invites Mirlees to join him. The section closes with the stakes rising further as Philipson realizes part of his maps were left behind, raising the question of a risky return to Shanghai.