The tall greyhead, whose name we had discovered to be Kalliboas--that is the nearest I can get in our letters to the very musical way we always heard it pronounced--now led through to rooms that had been made ready for us. They were severe and undecorated, these chambers, but after the barbarisms of camp life in the Tibetan mountains they seemed absolutely luxurious. The walls were all plain marble, built in great blocks beautifully smoothed and united by a white cream-like mortar, very little of which appeared, however, as the blocks fitted almost face to face. The floor was likewise marble, bare except for here and there a rug about half an inch thick, made of a fabric that was put to a variety of uses in the valley. It seemed to me to be a sort of linen, extremely soft and fine in texture, and so woven and interwoven as to give it the stoutness of felt. This same lawn-like material was used to upholster the couches, the only furniture, which were built of the same dark wood as the house door. We discovered afterwards that chairs were unknown, and that the tables used for meals consisted of low platforms placed between the couches, the diners always reclining to take their food. It seemed strange there should be no tables of our pattern, if only for writing purposes, but the explanation was stranger than the fact. Writing was comparatively neglected. I found out before I had been in the valley long that there was a drama among that community, and an exuberant literary art, but these were practised for the greater part orally and in public; and so keen were the powers of memory commonly possessed, that writing for the sake of recording accurately was hardly necessary. What writing was done mainly took the form of decorative carving on stone. We had passed close by several examples of this on our way into the city, and if we still harboured any doubt as to the true origin of the language, those inscriptions finally dispelled it. The styles of chisel-writing were many, from straight-lined majuscules to the most ornate and flowing hand, but the base of it all was unquestionably the alphabet known to the world at large as Greek. Two sandalled attendants appeared, crossing the marble floor with scarcely a sound, and to these Kalliboas turned us over with orders to see to our wants. We were taken to one side of the building, where we found a row of baths, each built into the floor and filled with enough warm water to float a grown man--even one of the giants of the valley--comfortably. The attendants relieved us of the rest of our travel-smirched rags, laid down a pile of towels of the ubiquitous linen-like stuff, and with a word to Poyning, whom they had discovered to be our linguist, they went.