Notes are issued for the third, fourth, and twelfth parts of
this: values smaller than the latter are represented by a token
coinage of square medals composed of an alloy in which gold and silver
respectively are the principal elements. The lowest coin is worth
about threepence of English money.
Stopping at the largest public building in the city, a central hexagon
with a number of smaller hexagons rising around it, we entered one of
the latter, each side of which might be some 30 feet in length and 15
in height. Here were ranged a large number of instruments on the
principle of the voice-writer, but conveying the sound to a vast
distance along electric wires into one which reverses the
voice-recording process, and repeats the vocal sound itself. Through
one of these, after exchanging a few words with one of the officials
in charge of them, Esmo carried on a conversation of some length, the
instrument being so arranged that while the mouth is applied to one
tube another may be held to the ear to receive the reply. In the
meantime I fell in with one of the officers, apparently very young,
who was strongly interested at the sight of the much-canvassed
stranger, and, perhaps on this account, far more obliging than is
common among his countrymen.
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