Many of the Malagasy hawks are beautiful birds, with horizontal bars of alternate light and dark colour on breast and tail; but perhaps the most handsome of them all is the Rayed Gymnogene, which is of a pearly-grey colour, barred with black, while on the tail and quill feathers are broad bands of pure white and intensely glossy black. This bird stands high, having very long legs, with a crest of feathers on the crown and neck.
As the end of October draws near the people are busily at work, not only in the rice-fields, but also repairing their houses, mending their grass or rush roofs, and hurrying on their sun-dried brick or clay building before the heavy rains fall. The majority of native houses are of those materials, and everything must be finished, or at least well protected from the weather, before the rainy season comes on. The water-courses, too, need attention, and the river banks must be repaired, lest a succession of heavy rains should swell the streams, break through the embankments and flood the rice-plains.
Summer: November, December, January and February.—Summer in central Madagascar is not only the hot season, but it is also the rainy season, very little rain falling at any other time of the year. It is accordingly called by the Malagasy Fàhavàratra—i.e. “thunder-time”—since almost all heavy rain is accompanied by a thunderstorm; and taking the average of a good many years, this season may be said to commence at the beginning of November.
A TROPICAL STORM
As the sun gets every day more nearly vertical at noon, on his passage towards the southern tropic, the heat increases, and the electric tension of the air becomes more oppressive. For a week or more previous to the actual commencement of the rains, the clouds gather towards evening, and the heavens are lighted up at night by constant flashes of lightning. But at length, after a few days of this sultry weather, towards midday the huge cumuli gather thickly over the sky and gradually unite into a dense mass, purple-black in colour, and soon the thunder is heard. It rapidly approaches nearer and nearer, the clouds touching the lower hills, then down darts the forked lightning, followed by the roar of the thunder, and presently a wild rush of wind, as if it came from all quarters at once, tells us that the storm is upon us, and then comes the rain, in big heavy drops for a few seconds and soon in torrents, as if the sluice-gates of the clouds were opened. The lightning is almost incessant; now and then, in one of the nearer crashes, it is as if the whole artillery of heaven were playing upon the doomed earth; and for half-an-hour or so there is often hardly any interval between the crashing and reverberations of the thunder peals, the hills around the capital echoing back the roar from the clouds. Certainly a heavy thunderstorm in Madagascar is an awfully grand and glorious spectacle and is not without a considerable element of danger too, especially for anyone caught in the storm in the open, or in a house unprotected by a lightning-conductor. Every house of any pretensions in the central provinces has this safeguard, for every year many people are killed by lightning, some while walking on the road, and others in houses unprotected by a conductor. One often hears of strange freaks, so to speak, played by the lightning; for instance, one of our college students, travelling with wife and children to the Bétsiléo, was killed instantaneously, as well as a slave near him, when sitting in a native house, while a child he was nursing at the time escaped with a few burns only. A missionary of the Norwegian Society was struck by lightning, which melted the watch in his pocket, drove the nails out of his shoes, and yet he escaped with no other harm than some burns, which eventually healed.
A large quantity of rain sometimes falls during such storms in a very short time. On one occasion three and a quarter inches fell in less than half-an-hour; and as the streets and paths through the capital were formerly all very steep, and there was no underground drainage, it may be imagined what a roar of water there was all over the city after such a storm. The three or four chief thoroughfares were transformed into the beds of rushing torrents and a series of cascades; from every compound spouted out a jet of water to join the main stream, and it used to be no easy matter to get about at all in the rush and the roar. It was no wonder that most of the highways of the capital got deeper and deeper every year. Even where there was an attempt at a rough paving, a single storm would often tear it up and pile the stones together in a big hole, with no more order than obtains in the bed of a cataract. After the rains were over, the red soil was dug away from the sides to fill up the channel cut by the torrent, and so the road gradually sank below the walls of the compounds on either side of it.[7]
RAINFALL
The annual rainfall of Antanànarìvo is about fifty inches, December and January being the wettest months, with an average fall of ten to twelve inches each. It is very unusual for thunderstorms to occur in the morning, they mostly come on in the afternoon; and after the first heavy downpour a steady rain will often continue for three or four hours, and occasionally far into the night. It is generally bright and fine in the early morning; all vegetation is refreshed by the plentiful moisture; and the people are busy in their plantations on the sloping hillsides, digging up the softened earth for planting manioc, sweet potatoes, the edible arum, and many other vegetables.
Hail also very frequently falls during these thunderstorms; and should it be late in the season, when the rice is in ear, great damage is often done to the growing crop. A large extent of rice-field will sometimes be stripped of every grain, the stalks standing up like bare sticks. Charms against hail had therefore in the old heathen times a prominent place in the popular beliefs and, there can be little doubt, are still trusted in and used by many of the more ignorant people. Occasionally the hailstones are of very large size and kill sheep and small animals, if they are left unsheltered. I remember a storm of this kind, when the hailstones were as large as good-sized nuts, while some were cushion-shaped and hexagonal, with a hollow in the centre, and nearly one and a half inches in diameter. In other cases they have been seen as jagged lumps of ice; and it may be easily imagined that it is very unpleasant and somewhat dangerous to be exposed to such a fusillade.