Friday Market at Antanànarìvo
This was before the French Conquest. Note the different types of houses, tiled and thatched

Here and there throughout the province one comes across a village which was formerly the capital of a petty kingdom, where we find several strong and well-built timber houses. Such a place was Ambòhitritankàdy (I say “was,” because it now no longer exists), one of the villages in my mission district. It was on a high hill, and in the centre of the village were ten large houses of massive timber framing and with very high-pitched roofs, with long “horns” at the gables, and these were arranged five on each side of a long oblong space sunk a couple of feet below the ground. Here, in former times, bull-fights took place, and various games and amusements were carried on. One of the houses, where the chief himself resided, was much larger than the rest, and the corner posts, as well as the great central posts supporting the ridge, were very massive pieces of timber. It was all in one great room, without any partitions, the whole being well floored with wood, and the walls covered with fine mats. Similar houses might be seen at most of the chief towns of Imèrina; but the house I have just described was the largest and finest of any, not excepting those in the capital and at Ambòhimànga. Sad to say, except at these two places, where two ancient timber houses at the first one, and one at the other, are still preserved as a kind of curiosity, almost all these fine structures have been demolished in order to get well-seasoned timber for furniture and buildings. They have been superseded by much less picturesque, but perhaps more comfortable as well as cheaper, houses of sun-dried or burnt brick.

There is no privacy or retirement about the houses in the village, no back-yard or outbuildings, although occasionally low walls make a kind of enclosure around some of them. Here and there among the houses are square pits, four or five feet deep, and eight or ten feet square, called fàhitra. These are pens for the oxen, which are kept in them to be fattened, formerly especially for the national festival of the New Year. As may be supposed, these are very dirty places, and in the wet season are often just pools of black mud; indeed the village, as a whole, is anything but neat and clean. All sorts of rubbish and filth accumulate; there are no sanitary arrangements; frequently the cattle used to be penned for the night in a part of the village, and the cow-dung made it very muddy in wet weather, and raised clouds of stifling dust when it was dry. Frequently the cow-dung is collected and made into circular cakes of six or eight inches diameter, which are then stuck on the walls of the houses to dry. This is used as fuel for burning; and splitting off large slabs of gneiss rock, which are employed by the people in making their tombs.

In the centre of the village may often be seen the large family tomb of the chief man of the place, the owner of much of the land and many of the neighbouring rice-fields. If he is an andrìana, or of noble birth, the stonework is surmounted by a small wooden house, with thatched or shingled roof, and a door, but no window. This is called tràno màsina, “sacred house,” or tràno manàra, “cold house,” because it has no hearth or fire.

Seen from a distance, these Malagasy villages often look very pretty and picturesque, for “distance lends enchantment to the view.” Round some of them tall trees, called àviàvy, a species of ficus, grow, which are something like an English elm in appearance. In others one or two great amòntana trees may be seen; these are also a species of fig-tree, and have large and glossy leaves. The amòntana is evergreen, while the àviàvy is deciduous. A beautiful tree, called zàhana, is also common, with hundreds of pink flowers and sweetish fruit like a pea-pod. In the fosses is often seen the amìana, a tall tree-nettle, with large deeply cut and velvety leaves with stinging hairs. Many kinds of shrubs often make the place gay with flowers, especially in the hot season.

HOVA CHILDREN

But what are the Hova children like? How are they dressed? And what do they play at? They are brown-skinned, some very light olive in colour, and some much darker. As a rule they have little clothing; perhaps some of the boys may have a straw hat, but no shoes or stockings, and they are often dirty and little cared for. On Sundays and on special occasions the girls are often dressed in print frocks, and the boys in jackets of similar material, and with a clean white calico làmba overall; but on weekdays a small làmba of soiled and coarse hemp cloth often forms almost their only clothing. Of course the children of well-to-do people are sometimes very nicely dressed, although they too often go about in a rather dirty fashion. I am here, however, speaking of the majority of the children one sees, those of the poorer children of a village.[10] One day some of us went for a ride to a village about two miles from Ambòhimànga. A number of children followed us about as we collected ferns in a hàdy, and, as a group of seven or eight of them sat near us, we calculated that the value of all they had on would not amount to one shilling!

Poor children! they have little advantages compared with English boys and girls, and they have few amusements. They sometimes play at a game which is very like our “fox and geese”; the boys spin peg-tops and play at marbles; the little children make figures of oxen and birds, etc., out of clay; the boys are fond of a game resembling the lassoing of wild oxen, by trying to catch their companions by throwing a noose over them; and the big boys have a rough and violent game called mamèly dìa mànga, in which they try to throw an opponent down by kicking backward at each other, with the sole of the foot, which is darted out almost as high as their heads. Ribs are sometimes broken by a violent kick. Perhaps the most favourite amusement of Malagasy children is to sit in parties out of doors on fine moonlight nights and sing away for hours some of the monotonous native chants, accompanying them with regular clapping of hands.

In about a fourth of these villages, where there are churches, a mission day school is still carried on, and here may be seen, if we look in, a number of bright-looking children repeating their a, b, d (not c), reading and writing, doing sums, learning a little grammar and geography, and being taught their catechism, and something about the chief facts and truths of the Bible. And perhaps there is no more pleasant sight in Madagascar than one of the larger chapels on the annual examination day, filled with children from the neighbouring villages, all dressed in their best, eager to show their knowledge, and pleased to get the Bible or Testament or hymn-book or other prize given to those who have done well.