His master gave him at the same time what was evidently an order, repeating it twice, and speaking with signal clearness of intonation.

The little creature bowed its head, apparently as 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.