To the west, from north to south, the prospect is very extensive. To the south-west there rises by very gradual slopes, at some thirty-five miles’ distance, the mass of Ankàratra, its three or four highest peaks reaching an elevation of nearly nine thousand feet above the sea, and about half that height above the general level of the country. But even at such a distance the summits usually stand out sharp and clear against the sky. Due west and north-west is a considerable extent of comparatively level country, beyond which mountains fifty miles away are distinctly seen on the horizon. In the foreground, stretching away many miles, is the great rice-plain of Bétsimitàtatra, from which numbers of low red hills, most of them with villages, rise like islands out of a green sea where the rice is growing. Along the plain the river Ikòpa can be seen, winding its way northwards to join the Bétsibòka; the united streams, with many tributaries, flowing into the sea through the Bay of Bèmbatòka. This great plain, “the granary of Antanànarìvo,” was formerly an immense marsh, and earlier still an extensive lake with numerous bays among the surrounding hills; but since the embanking of the river by some of the early kings of Imèrina, it has become the finest rice-plain of the island and, with its connected valleys, furnishes the bulk of the food of the people of the central province.
DAMAGE BY STORMS
The embankments require, of course, constant attention during the rainy season, when the river is swollen by the heavy rains; and during the time of the native regime, an unusually wet season would cause them to give way, so that the rice-fields were flooded. At such times the whole population would be called out to help in stopping the breaches, and I remember one occasion, a Sunday, when we had no afternoon service, and with others of my brother missionaries I spent several hours in carrying sods and stones, together with our people. Another such calamity occurred in January 1893; for on the night of Saturday, the 28th, and the following day, there was an unusually heavy storm, doing immense damage, destroying hundreds of houses and village churches, and breaking the river banks, so that in a day or two hundreds of thousands of acres of the great rice-plain were under water, three or four feet deep. In some parts it was difficult to trace the river banks; it was “water, water everywhere,” and scores of low hills were again turned into islands, cut off from all communication, except by canoe, with the world around them. If one could have forgotten the terrible loss to the people of their crops of rice just ready to be cut, it was a most beautiful scene, and reminded one that in ancient times this great plain was always a lake, when many now extinct animals, reptiles and gigantic birds found a home in it and on its shores. For centuries the heavy rains—probably far heavier then than now, from the greater extent of forest—went on filling up the valleys with the rich black and blue loam; gradually the lake became less and less deep; slowly the river cut out its bed; and then man came on the scene, and the old native kings aided nature by embanking the river; the marshes became rice-fields and supplied with food the present large population which lives all around it.
From this elevated point at least a hundred small towns and villages can be recognised, many of them marked by the tiled roof, and often the tower, of the village church, which shines out distinctly amid the brown thatched roofs of most of the houses. This view from the summit of the capital is certainly an unrivalled one, in Madagascar at least, for its variety and extent, as well as for the human interest of its different parts, as shown by the large population, the great area of cultivated land, the embanked rivers, and the streams and water-channels for irrigation seen in every direction.
Pounding and Winnowing Rice
A palanquin bearer is in the doorway
A Hova Middle-class Family at a Meal
Rice is the staple food, with a meat or vegetable relish
Springtime: September and October.—With the early days of September we may usually say that springtime in Imèrina fairly sets in, and that the year in its natural aspects properly commences. By a true instinct, arising doubtless from long observation of the change of the seasons, the Malagasy call this time Lòhataona—i.e. “the head, or beginning, of the year”—when nature seems to awake from the comparative deadness of the cold and dry winter months, during which the country has looked bare and uninviting, but now begins again to give promise of fertility and verdure. The keen cold winds and drizzly showers of the past few weeks give place to warmer air and clearer skies, and although usually there is but little rain during September, the deciduous trees begin to put forth their leaves, and flower-buds appear as heralds of the fuller display of vegetable life which will be seen after the rains have fallen.
RICE-FIELDS