a sign of intelligence, and in a few minutes returned with what seemed like a pencil or stylus and writing materials, and with a large silver-like box of very curious form.  To one side was affixed a sort of mouthpiece, consisting of a truncated cone expanding into a saucer-shaped bowl.  Across the wider and outer end of the cone was stretched a membrane or diaphragm about three inches in diameter.  Into the mouth of the bowl, two or three inches from the diaphragm, my host spoke one by one a series of articulate but single sounds, beginning with a, a, aa, au, o, oo, ou, u, y or ei (long), i (short), oi, e, which I afterwards found to be the twelve vowels of their language.  After he had thus uttered some forty distinct sounds, he drew from the back of the instrument a slip of something like goldleaf, on which as many weird curves and angular figures were traced in crimson.  Pointing to these in succession, he repeated the sounds in order.  I made out that the figures in question represented the sounds spoken into the instrument, and taking out my pencil, marked under each the equivalent character of the Roman alphabet, supplemented by some letters not admitted therein but borrowed from other Aryan tongues.  My host looked on with some interest whilst I did this, and bent his head as if in approval.  Here then was the alphabet of the Martial tongue—­an alphabet not arbitrary, but actually produced by the vocal sounds it represented!  The elaborate machinery modifies the rough signs which are traced by the mere aerial vibrations; but each character is a true physical type, a visual image, of the spoken sound; the voice, temper, accent, sex, of a speaker affect the phonograph, and are recognisable in the record.  The instrument wrote, so to speak, different hands under my voice and under Esmo’s; and those who knew him could identify his phonogram, as my friends my manuscript.

After I had been employed for some time in fixing these forms and the corresponding sounds in my memory, my host advanced to the window, and opening it, led me into the interior garden; which, as I had supposed, was a species of central court around which the house was built.

The construction of the house was at once apparent.  It consisted of a front portion, divided by the gallery of which I have spoken, all the rooms on one side thereof looking, like the chamber I first entered, into the outer enclosure; those on the other into the interior garden or peristyle.  Beyond the latter was a single row of chambers opening upon it, appropriated to the ladies and children of the household.  The court was roofed over with the translucent material of the windows.  It was about 360 feet in length by 300 in width.  At either end were chambers entirely formed of the same material as the roof, in one of which the various birds and animals employed either in domestic service or in agriculture, in another the various stores of the household, were kept.  In front of these, two inclined planes of the same