Malagasy Men Dancing
This consists of graceful movements of hands, body, and feet. Men and women never dance together
The following day, Sunday, was a disappointing one, for we quite thought in the morning that we were only two or three hours’ journey, at most, from Màsindràno, where we hoped to meet with a good congregation. But we had to travel for hour after hour, delayed in crossing the lagoons in a vain search for food, and in other ways, so that it was sunset before we crossed the Mànanjàra river, and after dark before we at last reached the town. However, here we met with the kindest welcome, had good houses put at our disposal, and there was abundance of food for us all.
WHALES
On the following day we left the seashore, along which, first going southwards and afterwards northwards, we had travelled for so many days. And here I may remark that dolphins are often seen in the Madagascar seas, especially the small species called Delphinus pas, which is frequently seen leaping, plunging and swimming with astonishing swiftness and in large shoals. These animals love to pursue the flying-fish, and in this chase they display extraordinary dexterity. Two species of whale also frequent the seas round Madagascar, but they are chiefly seen on the western side of the island. The huge form of the cachelot or sperm-whale, with its remarkably square head, looking as if it had been cut off right across, especially when it turns to dive, as I have seen it, seems to have impressed the imagination of the Malagasy, because when an earthquake occurs they say, Mivàdika ny tròzona—i.e. “The whales are turning over.”
After leaving the east coast we sailed up the broad river Mànanjàra, stopping a night at another Hova military post, a large village called Itsìatòsika. Here again we had great kindness shown to us by the most polite and gentlemanly set of Hova officers we had ever met. For the first day and a half our route lay chiefly up the valley of the river, over undulating country; but during the next two and half days we had to travel to the north-west, through the belt of dense forest covering the lines of mountain which are the successive steps into the bare interior highland. Through this rugged country, travelling was very difficult, and the steep ascents very fatiguing. As we got up a thousand feet, there was line after line of hill and mountain, all covered with forest, as far as the eye could reach, to the north and south and west. Besides the ordinary forest trees, there were great numbers of the graceful palm called Anìvona, which, in the struggle for light and heat, here grows to a great height. As we have seen in speaking of the old style of timber houses, this palm was made much use of in their construction. There were magnificent and extensive views from the higher ground; and conspicuous for a whole day’s journey was a lofty perpendicular cliff of bright red rock, rising sheer up many hundreds of feet from the valley below.
A HEATHENISH FUNERAL
A little before reaching the summit of one ridge we heard a good deal of noise and shouting ahead of us, and supposed that the Tanàla were dragging an unusually large piece of timber. On getting nearer, we found fifty or sixty people, men and women, and a number of men carrying something, which, coming closer to them, we found was a child’s coffin, made of a piece of the trunk of a tree hollowed out, and with a rough cover of wood fastened on with bands of a strong creeper. This was being carried with a barbarous kind of chant, but without the slightest sign of mourning on the part of anyone. It was the most heathenish kind of funeral we had ever seen. Among these forest people funerals are called fàndrorìtam-pàty (lit. “stretching out of the corpse”), and it seems that the coffin is pulled about first in one direction and then in another by the different parties of those following it; and it is finally thrown into some hollow in the woods. It was a saddening sight.
We found that we had come again among our old friends, the Tanàla, for in their mats and undressed appearance, and their use of bark cloth, the women in the villages were just like those we had seen from Ivòhitròsa downwards.
Our second day in the forest brought us to a height of fourteen hundred and fifty feet above the sea; and, notwithstanding our fatigue from having to walk continually for several hours, we were charmed again with the luxuriance of the vegetation. The anìvona-palms shot up their slender columns, banded with lines of white on dark green to heights of eighty to a hundred feet, and the traveller’s trees were as lofty, in the fierce competition for life. The tree-ferns spread out their graceful fronds over the streams; and the Vaquois pandanus carried its large clusters of serrated leaves high overhead to get up to the light. In some places the woods were very dense, and there was a green twilight as we passed along the narrow path amongst the crowd of tall trunks. We were struck by the intense silence of the forest; there was no sound of animal life, and no voice of bird, or beast, or insect broke the oppressive stillness. For six hours and a half we hardly saw a house except isolated woodcutters’ huts; and we were glad at last to see the sparkling waters of the Mànanjàra in front of us, and to find a village of twenty houses on its banks.