He found Cathur, a mountainous state lying to the north of a wide mountain walled strait. He found Scira, its capital city, not unlike Himyra save that it was built of an odd blue stone quarried from the mountains which ribbed the state in all directions. There was white stone, too, used in the governmental palace, and also in a splendid collection of buildings lying on a small plateau above the city proper. This was the National University of Tamarizia, as Jason quickly learned, once he was inside its walls. Endowed as he was with the peculiar ability of reading the words of the people by reason of his sublimated state, he found this school a wonderful means of quickly gaining all knowledge of the nation which he desired to know. He literally went to school, an unknown scholar who listened to the recitation of classes and the lectures of grave professorial men clad in long robes of spotless white. Geography held his interest mainly at first. He learned that Tamarizia lay upon a continent holding itself completely surrounded save for the narrow strait, a vast central sea, studded here and there with islands, the major of which, Hiranur, some fifty miles long by twenty wide, was the seat of the imperial throne at the city of Zitra, of which Jadgor had made mention before. The Tamarizian states bordered this central ocean--or had done so before the Zollarian war had wrested Mazhur, on the extreme north shore, from the original group of states. East of Mazhur lay Bithur. South of that was Milidhur, completing the eastern side of the Central Sea. Aphur joined Milidhur on the west--its name literally meaning "the state to the west," and south of Milidhur and Aphur was Nodhur, gaining outlet for its commerce by means of the river Na. Cathur lay west of Mazhur, north of the strait, to the outer ocean, completing the circle. Its name might be translated as the battle-ground, which, in fact, it was, Zollaria having more than once sought to conquer it and lost because of the nature of its mountainous terrain. Having learned so much, he could readily see wherein the possession of this state would give Zollaria the freedom of the seas, which she desired, and a joint control of the entire Central Sea. From geography he turned to sociology and science. He found out quickly that the Tamarizians used a metric system, numbering their population by tens and dividing the national census on the basis of thousands and tens of thousands, each thousand unit having a captain and each ten thousand a local governor. Their day was twenty-seven hours long, their year longer than that of earth, but divided into twelve periods or months, each in their belief ruled over by an angel designated by a symbolic sign.