ROADS AND TRAVELLING
It is probably well known to most readers of this book that a railway now connects Tamatave, the chief port of the east coast, with Antanànarìvo, the capital, which is about a third of the way across the island. So that the journey from the coast to the interior, which, up to the year 1899, used to take from eight to ten days, can now be accomplished in one day. Besides this, good roads now traverse the country in several directions, so that wheeled vehicles can be used; and on some of these a service of motor cars keeps up regular communication with many of the chief towns and the capital.
But we shall not, in these pages, have much to do with these modern innovations, for a railway in Madagascar is very much like a railway in Europe. Our journeys will mostly be taken by the old-fashioned native conveyance, the filanjàna or light palanquin, carried by four stout and trusty native bearers. We shall thus not be whirled through the most interesting portion of our route, catching only a momentary glimpse of many a beautiful scene. We can get down and walk, whenever we like, to observe bird or beast or insect, to gather flower or fern or lichen or moss, or to take a rock specimen, things utterly impracticable either by railway or motor car, and not very easy to do in any wheeled conveyance. Our object will be, not to get through the journey as fast as possible, but to observe all that is worth notice during the journey. We shall therefore, in this style of travel, not stay in modern hotels, but in native houses, notwithstanding their drawbacks and discomforts; and thus we shall see the Malagasy as they are, and as their ancestors have been for generations gone by, almost untouched by European influence, and so be able to observe their manners and customs, and learn something of their ideas, their superstitions, their folk-lore, and the many other ways in which they differ from ourselves.
EXTENT OF THE ISLAND
Let us, however, first try to get a clear notion about this great island, and to realise how large a country it is. Take a fair-sized map of Madagascar, and we see that it rises like some huge sea-monster from the waters of the Indian Ocean; or, to use another comparison, how its outline is very like the sole—the left-hand one—of a human foot. As we usually look at the island in connection with a map of Africa, it appears as a mere appendage to the great “Dark Continent”; and it is difficult to believe that it is really a thousand miles long, and more than three hundred miles broad, with an area of two hundred and thirty thousand square miles, thus exceeding that of France, Belgium and Holland all put together.[2] Before the year 1871 all maps of Madagascar, as regards its interior, were pure guesswork. A great backbone of mountains was shown, with branches on either side, like a huge centipede. But it is now clear that, instead of these fancy pictures, there is an extensive elevated region occupying about two-thirds of the island to the east and north, leaving a wide stretch of low country to the west and south; and as the watershed is much nearer the east than the west of the island, almost all the chief rivers flow, not into the Indian Ocean, but into the Mozambique Channel. When we add that a belt of dense forest runs all along the east side of Madagascar, and is continued, with many breaks, along the western side, and that scores of extinct volcanoes are found in several districts of the interior, we shall have said all that is necessary at present as to the physical geography. Many more details of this, as well as of the geology, will come under our notice as we travel through the country in various directions.
[1] Histoire Physique, Naturelle et Politique de Madagascar, publiée par Alfred Grandidier, Paris, à l’Imprimerie Nationale; in fifty-two volumes, quarto.
[2] I have often been astonished and amused by the notions some English people have about Madagascar. One gentleman asked me if it was not somewhere in Russia!—and a very intelligent lady once said to me: “I suppose it is about as large as the Isle of Wight!”
CHAPTER II
TAMATAVE AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE COUNTRY
IT was on a bright morning in September, 1863, that I first came in sight of Madagascar. In those days there was no service of steamers, either of the “Castle” or the “Messageries Maritimes” lines, touching at any Madagascar port, and the passage from Mauritius had to be made in what were termed “bullockers.” These vessels were small brigs or schooners which had been condemned for ordinary traffic, but were still considered good enough to convey from two to three hundred oxen from Tamatave to Port Louis or Réunion. It need hardly be said that the accommodation on board these ships was of the roughest, and the food was of the least appetising kind. A diet of cabbage, beans and pumpkin led one of my friends to describe the menu of the bullocker as “the green, the brown, and the yellow.” Happily, the voyage to Madagascar was usually not very long, and in my case we had a quick and pleasant passage of three days only; but I hardly hoped that daylight on Wednesday morning would reveal the country on which my thoughts had been centred for several weeks past; so it was with a strange feeling of excitement that soon after daybreak I heard the captain calling to me down the hatchway: “We are in sight of land!” Not many minutes elapsed before I was on deck and looking with eager eyes upon the island in which eventually most of my life was to be spent. We were about five miles from the shore, running under easy sail to the northward, until the breeze from the sea should set in and enable us to enter the harbour of Tamatave.