We generally divided our day’s journey into two parts. At daybreak we started, and marched for three or four hours; then we stopped to breakfast on rice and poultry, frequently diversified by wild birds of some kind, often black parrots, and other beautiful specimens which Mr. Lambert shot on our way. After a rest of about two hours we set out to accomplish the second portion of our day’s march, which generally about equaled the first in length.
To-day, however, we contented ourselves with getting through the first stage, for it was the day for celebrating the great national feast. The queen had no doubt taken her auspicious new-year’s bath this morning. Mr. Lambert would not rob his bearers of the pleasure of participating in the enjoyments of the day; so, at ten o’clock in the morning, we halted in the village of Ampatsiba.
The first business was to slaughter the oxen. The rule of the feast, which enjoins that as many shall be slain as are sufficient for the day and the seven following, was not strictly carried out, for the weight of meat would have been too great for the men to carry; but five of the finest animals were offered up as a sacrifice to the day; for Mr. Lambert entertained not only our people, but the whole village. In the evening four or five hundred people assembled—men, women, and children—in front of our huts; and, to complete the enjoyment of the feast, Mr. Lambert had their favorite drink, besa-besa, served out to them. This beverage, which seemed to me the reverse of agreeable, is made from the juice of the sugar-cane mixed with water, and the bitter bark of afatraina. The water is first poured on the cane-juice, and when the mixture ferments, the bark is added, and a second fermentation takes place.
The festal character of the day, assisted perhaps by the besa-besa, put the little community in such good spirits that they volunteered an exhibition of their songs and dances, which were all equally stupid and uninteresting.
Some of the girls beat a little stick with all their might against a thick piece of bamboo; others sang, or rather howled, at the top of their voices: the noise was horrible. Then, two of the ebony beauties danced; that is, they moved slowly to and fro on a small space of ground, half lifted their arms, and turned their hands, first outward, and then toward their sides. Now, one of the men approached to exhibit his capabilities as a dancer. He was, most likely, the “lion” of the village. He tripped to and fro much in the style of his charming predecessors, only in rather more energetic fashion. Whenever he approached any of the women or girls, he was not deterred by our presence from making very expressive gestures, which were received by the assembled company with shouts of laughter and obstreperous applause; but the same thing is done at the public balls in Paris.
On this occasion I saw that the natives do not smoke tobacco, but take it in the form of snuff. The pinch is not inhaled through the nose, but inserted in the mouth. Both men and women enjoy their tobacco in this way.
In asserting that the “queen’s bath” was the only feast celebrated in Madagascar, I was right to this extent, that the aforesaid solemnity is the only occasion of universal rejoicing. The natives, however, practice the custom of circumcising their children, and these occasions are celebrated with much rejoicing. The ceremony takes place in the larger villages designated for the purpose by government, and to these places the parents have to bring their children at a certain period of the year. The happy fathers invite their relations and friends to the solemnity, and recreate themselves with song and dance, eating and drinking as long as their stores of beef, rice, and besa-besa hold out.
May 25th. After yesterday’s jollification, our bearers had hard work to-day. The hills were very steep, and far loftier than the former ones, averaging from five to seven hundred feet in height. Fortunately it had not rained, and on the dry earth climbing was not so very difficult a matter.
All the hills and mountains are here covered with virgin forests; but I looked in vain for the thick, lofty trees I had been accustomed to see in the wilds of Sumatra and Borneo, and even of America. The greatest trunks were scarcely four feet in diameter, and not more than a hundred in height. There was likewise no great profusion of flowering trees, orchidaceæ, and climbing plants; and the only remarkable feature in these forests seemed to be the large and varied genera of ferns, in which Madagascar rivals the Mauritius. I was informed that in the neighborhood of the roads all the great trees had already been cut down, but that in the depths of the forests splendid specimens might be met with, and that flowers, climbing plants, and orchidaceæ likewise abound in those solitudes.
From the summits of a few of the higher hills we had to climb we enjoyed glorious views of quite a peculiar kind. Never yet have I seen so great an expanse of land as this, consisting entirely of hills, lofty mountains, and narrow valleys and gorges, with not a single plain between. Twice we could descry the sea in the far distance.