They believed in the immortality of the soul, as he had learned the first day. They believed in the resurrection of the dead. They used a system of social castes, to which the naturalized descendants of the Mazzerian nations belonged, being purely a caste of the lowest or serving type. The trades of fathers descended to sons, instruction in crafts and arts being largely by word of mouth alone. They had a bard or minstrel caste, a caste of dancers wholly female in its circle. A Palosian year was called a cycle, a day a sun, a month a Zitran--or period set by Zitu, the national God. There was a priesthood and a vestal order of women. Also, there was an order of knighthood, to which belonged men of noble blood or those raised to it by kingly decree for some signal accomplishment in the arts or sciences or some other service to the state. * * * * * The royal house of each state was hereditary, but governed jointly with a state assembly elected by the vote of each ten thousand unit of population, each unit selecting a state delegate to the assembly. The imperial throne was filled by the choice of the states, as he had once before heard Jadgor, of Aphur, say. Agriculture was highly held and greatly specialized. Metal working was a very advanced science, as he had already guessed. Copper was abundant, and the Tamarizians held the secret of tempering the metal, now unknown on earth. Of it they made their weapons and most of their public structural metal, including their carriages and chariots and all conveyances of a finer sort. Gold was plentiful, too. But silver and lead were rare and held in high esteem. Steam and electricity were unknown in their application, as Croft had already seen. They had reached a high plane in art, sculpture and weaving. He discovered that the golden cloth was actually gold spun into threads and mixed with a vegetable fiber to form warp and wool. There was also a medical caste, somewhat crude, but seemingly efficient, so far as he could learn, and attached to it a female or nursing caste, consisting wholly again of women, who entered it from choice. In fact, women, as he came to see, held a prominent place in the nation. They held the right of suffrage. Their citizenship was coequal with their men. They sat in the class-rooms of the university, as he actually saw, and even took part in public ceremonials and competed in the public games. All in all, before his week at Scira was past, he had come to understand that Tamarizia was a very democratic nation despite its form of royal rulership, and that the emperor of Zitra was little more than a relic of old-time government, with little more power than a republican president.