CHAPTER IV.
HIEROGLYPHICS AND TRANSCENDENTAL GEOGRAPHY.
EDUCATION is pretty generally diffused among the Colymbians, but, of course, all classes are not educated alike. There are schools for the masses where the language, writing, arithmetic and sundry useful arts are taught. As all the places under Government, except the chief offices of state, are obtained by competitive examination, the education of the young men of the upper ranks, among whom places under Government are the great objects of ambition, is, as a rule, very sedulously carried out; but the branches of knowledge taught are chiefly those which form the subjects of examination.
Now, though the employments under Government are of the most varied sorts, requiring, one would think, a different education for each office, I found that the examinations for all are nearly identical. Whatever the office, whether it be a simple clerkship, a secretaryship, an appointment as an inspector of light, air, drainage or police, as a lawyer or an instructor, the main subject on which candidates are examined is the hieroglyphical writing on the monuments and in the ancient documents of the land.
