We slept during our journey sometimes at the habitations of chiefs, sometimes at peasants' huts, and sometimes at houses in villages provided for our accommodation.  The chiefs' houses were small, but compactly built.  We remarked that the water was kept in large earthen jars--like those used in the Holy Land, I conclude.  The sleeping-places were neatly arranged round the rooms, and there was a general air of comfort and respectability perceptible in most of them.  Very different was a peasant's hut when we entered.  It was not more than twenty feet square, divided into two compartments.  In the outer were calves, lambs, and fowls.  In the inner, at one end was a bed, and at the foot of it a fireplace, over which a man was cooking a pot of rice.  His wife sat before a loom, consisting of four upright sticks fixed in the ground, with rods across.  At the distance of seven feet were two short sticks driven into the ground, connected by a bar, over which was stretched the woof of silk to be woven.  On this simple apparatus the most beautiful and rich patterns are worked.  Silk-worms abound in some of the provinces, and a very large amount might be produced and form an important article of trade.