Their occupations are, chiefly, tending cattle, growing rice, fishing, and making tòaka (rum). Almost every family keeps cattle, save the very poorest, and there is nothing the people like better than to follow their herds and camp out in the pastures with their wives and children. The day of cutting the ears of the young animals (so as to distinguish them from those of the queen) was always kept as a day of rejoicing, killing oxen, and feasting. Yet very few milk their cattle, for they prefer the broth made from fish to milk.
STORING RICE
As we went round the outside edge of the plain, we saw a large extent of rice ground under cultivation; but the people do not dig the soil, or transplant the rice, as is the custom in Imèrina, but cultivate their fields in the following way. First of all they make a number of low earthen banks, which are intended to hold the water. That being done, oxen are driven over the ground to be planted, where the water is a few inches deep, and when the soil has been well turned over, then the rice is sown; and there it is left until it is reaped, without transplanting or weeding. When the rice has been reaped, it is heaped together in round stacks, which are of a considerable size. When quite dry, the grain is threshed out with a stick, two men or more striking in regular turn. The rice is not stored in pits, as in Imèrina, but in an enormous kind of basket or round enclosure, made of papyrus plaited together, and about eight feet high and from twenty to thirty feet in diameter. These are in the fields, and are roofed over; and rice being so cheap and plentiful with them, the people do not measure the rice itself, but they reckon it by the number of these vòlovàry, of which the richer Sihànaka have seven or eight or more.
CATCHING FISH
Catching fish in the lake and in the numerous streams and pieces of water is the business of both men and women. The men angle for eels, the women dredge for small fish in the shallow water (using a kind of basket like a large sieve), and the little children fish with bait. All the children have a tiny canoe, in which they go fishing in the early morning from six to nine o’clock, when they return home, for their small canoes would be upset by the wind and waves as the day advances. The women catch, by dredging, small fish called tòho and also shrimps. These they dry in the sun, sew up in baskets, and take for sale to the markets, many people becoming wealthy by their sale. Until a few years ago all sales were done by barter, for little money was employed. And it is the custom for the men not to bring home what they have caught, but to leave it by the waterside for the women to fetch.
There is abundance of tòaka (rum) made in Antsihànaka, and its manufacture is the work of poor old men and women and (formerly) of slaves. In every house it is to be found, for they think it shows a want of respect to visitors if they have not plenty of tòaka to give them. Whatever be the business in hand, whether funerals or rejoicings, nothing can be done without drinking tòaka (see an earlier paragraph).
We left Ambòhijànahàry on Tuesday morning and turned eastward. Our road lay through low swampy ground, often wading through water and floundering through bog. But there was also a large extent of land covered with rice-fields, and we passed several villages. We left the lines of hills, which come down and terminate abruptly at the edge of the plain. Rain fell during the last half of the journey and a thick mist shut out everything from view; there was water above and around, and water and bog below, so it was the most uncomfortable of all our journeys. The only objects to interest were the clouds of birds, which flew over our heads in immense numbers in every direction. Soon after ten o’clock we got to a village of seventy or eighty houses, called very inappropriately, Ambòhitsàra (“good town”), for it was quite in the swamp, raised only a few inches above the level, and surrounded by water, most of it stagnant. Here the people of the village, in their speech to us, spoke of our staying there that night, and crossing the lake the following morning; but as it was still early in the day, and the water was not an hour distant, we felt most unwilling to stop, especially as we feared risk of fever by staying the night in such a low and damp situation. We therefore told them that we must, if possible, get across the lake that day, and requested them to lose no time in getting sufficient canoes to take us over. After tiffin, we determined to go and see for ourselves, and with much difficulty got our men off. The path was better than in the morning, a large extent of land here being fine pasture and covered with cattle.
A PLEASANT PICTURE
Three-quarters of an hour brought us to the lake, a beautiful expanse of water, but only one small canoe was visible, and a stiff breeze from the east had raised waves of a size quite formidable to such cranky craft as Malagasy canoes are. The shore opposite to us seemed from three to four miles distant; to the northward the water extended for several miles, with bays running up among the hills, and a large arm turning eastward in the direction of the valley through which the river draining the lake flows into the sea. Many of the villages on the rising ground across the water were seen quite distinctly (for it had turned out a lovely afternoon) and seemed large places. A considerable portion of the population is indeed massed round this north-east corner of the lake, and we regretted being obliged to leave so many large villages unvisited, but our time would not allow us to go round the head of the Alaotra. The picture was a pleasant one from the shore; the expanse of blue water, with the waves dancing and sparkling in the sunlight; the villages on the green hills across the lake; and behind them grand masses of mountain, with a good deal of dark forest capping them. To the north of the Màningòry valley was distinctly visible an extinct volcanic crater, with a large portion of one of its sides broken down and revealing the immense cup-shaped hollow within. The aneroid showed that the surface of the lake was twenty-six hundred feet above the sea, about nineteen hundred feet below the height of the capital.
We waited and waited on the shore, sweeping the opposite banks with our telescopes for signs of approaching canoes, but looked in vain; nothing like a canoe was to be seen, and the waves got higher and higher; evidently it would not have been safe to cross so late in the day, when the sea breeze, as is the case also on the coast lagoons, makes a considerable swell, and crossing is practicable only for the largest canoes. And while we are waiting, we may remark that this Lake Alaotra is the largest one in Madagascar, and is about twenty-five miles long, by four or five in average breadth. But as the level marshy land to the west and south is only a few inches above its surface, the lake is of much greater extent in the wet season. It receives the drainage of the northern portion of the Ankay plain, so that a considerable body of water must issue from its north-eastern arm and flow towards the sea. According to the Rev. L. Dahle, the name “Alaotra” is probably the Arabic Al-lutat, “the dashing of the waves,” the sea. The Arabs of the Comoro Islands and East Africa are known among the Malagasy as the “Taloatra”—i.e. “those from beyond the ocean.”[18]