IT rained heavily during the night of Tuesday and nearly until daybreak, so it was half-past six o’clock before we were able to leave Andòvorànto. Hitherto we had followed the seashore southwards; now we were to start westwards into the interior. After an immense deal of shouting and some quarrelling on the part of our bearers, who seemed to think it necessary for everyone to give his opinion at the same moment, we pushed off in six large canoes and paddled away up the river Ihàroka. For several miles the stream is upwards of a mile in width. It was a fine calm morning after a stormy night, and as we glided rapidly over the broad smooth expanse of water, and turned our canoe’s prow towards the interior mountains, I began really to feel that I was on my way to the capital.
After half-an-hour we came to a point where the river is a junction of three streams, the one we took being about half the width of the main current. We passed many canoes and overtook others; some of these were filled with rice and other produce, and had but a single rower; he sat generally at the stern and gave a few strokes with the paddle on each side of the canoe alternately, so as to keep the craft in a fairly straight course through the water. Other canoes were filled with what was evidently a family party, going together to some market held in one of the neighbouring villages. Our men seemed to enjoy the exercise of paddling, which was a change from bearing our palanquins and baggage on their shoulders, and they took us up the stream at a great speed. More than once, indeed, I wished they had been less vigorous, for they commenced racing with the other crews, making me not a little apprehensive of being upset. It would not have mattered much to them, as they swam fearlessly and had nothing to lose; but it would have been unpleasant and dangerous for us, even apart from the risk of crocodiles, which abound in most of the rivers of Madagascar.
CROCODILES
These reptiles are so numerous in many parts as to be a great pest; they often carry off sheep and cattle, and not unfrequently women and children who incautiously go into or even near the water. The Malagasy, however, have a superstitious dread of these monsters, which prevents them from attempting to kill them. They rather try to propitiate the creature by prayers and offerings thrown into the water, and by acknowledging its supremacy in its own element. At Itàsy, a lake fifty miles west of the capital, the people believe that if a crocodile be killed a human life will, within a very short time, be exacted by the animal’s brother reptiles, as an atonement for his death. Two or three French travellers once shot a crocodile in this lake, and such was the people’s consternation and dread of the consequences that their visitors found it expedient to quit the neighbourhood as quickly as possible. The eggs of the crocodile are collected and sold for food in the markets, and are said to be perfectly good, but I confess I never brought myself to test their merits.
We kept near the banks of the river, and so were able to examine and admire the luxuriant vegetation with which they were covered. In many places the bamboo is conspicuous, with its long-jointed, tapering stem, and its whorls of minute leaves, of a light delicate green; but it is small here compared with what we afterwards saw in the main forest. Plantations of sugar-cane and manioc were mingled with banana-trees, palms, pandanus and other trees, many not unlike English forms. Numbers of great water-lilies with blue flowers were growing in the shallow water, and convolvuli, as well as numerous other flowers of new kinds and colours, everywhere met the eye. The shores were flat at first, but became more hilly, and the scenery more varied, as we proceeded.
THE TRAVELLER’S TREE
As we sailed up the river the traveller’s tree (Ravenala madagascariensis) became very plentiful, and soon gave quite a peculiar character to the landscape. This remarkable and beautiful tree belongs to the order which includes the plantains and bananas, although in some points its structure resembles the palm rather than the plantain. It is immediately recognised by its graceful crown of broad green leaves, which grow at the top of its trunk in the form of an immense fan. The leaves are from twenty to thirty in number, and are from eight to ten feet long by a foot and a half broad. They very closely resemble those of the banana, and when unbroken by the wind have a very striking and beautiful appearance. The name of “traveller’s tree” is given on account of its affording at all times a supply of cool pure water upon piercing the base of the leaf-stalk with a spear or pointed stick. This supply is owing to the broad surface of the leaves, which condenses the moisture of the atmosphere, and from which the water trickles down into the hollow, where the leaf-stalks join the stem. Each of these forms a little reservoir, in which water may always be found. The leaves, as are also those of the banana, are used to beat the thatched roofs in case of fire, on account of the amount of water which they contain.
The name of “builder’s tree” might be given to it with equal or greater propriety, for it is as useful to the coast people as the cocoanut-palm is to the South Sea islanders. The leaves are used for thatching, and the long leaf-stems fastened together form the filling-in of the framework for the walls and partitions; the bark is beaten out flat and forms the flooring; while the trunk supplies timber for the framing. Quantities of the fresh leaves are used every day and take the place of plates and dishes; and at the New Year’s festival the jàka, or meat eaten at that time, was always served up, together with rice, upon pieces of the leaves of this tree or of the banana; and a kind of spoon or ladle was, and is still, formed, made by twisting up part of a leaf and tying it with the tendrils of some climbing plant. The tree ranges from the sea-coast to the height of about fifteen hundred feet, after which it begins rapidly to disappear. At an elevation of about a thousand feet it is extremely abundant, much more so, in fact, than any other tree, and is the one striking and peculiar feature in the vegetation. It is not found so much in the forests as on the hillsides in the open country; it has some half-dozen or more different names among the various tribes on the eastern side of the island.
Low-class Girl Fetching Water
On her head is the sìny, in her hand the zìnga