(2) Another kind of tomb was formed by a square stone structure, about twelve feet each way and four or five feet high, but on the top was an enclosure of carved posts and lintels about eight feet high, with a single carved post in the centre.
(3) A third kind of monument was a massive block of granite about ten feet high, with carved posts at the corners and touching them, and connected by cross-pieces; on these the skulls and horns of the bullocks killed at the funeral of the person commemorated were fixed.
(4) Another kind of memorial was a massive square post of wood, about twenty feet high and fifteen inches square, carved on all four sides from top to bottom. There were four or five of these enormous posts here; and in one case there was a pair of them, as if to form a kind of gateway.
(5) Still another kind was a great block of dressed granite, with iron hooping round the top, in which were fixed a dozen or more pairs of slender iron horns.
ELABORATE CARVING
All the way along the road to Ambòhinàmboàrina we came across different combinations of memorial posts, and of dressed fine white granite in upright blocks, in many cases arranged in couples, so that they were very conspicuous all over the surrounding country. Before leaving the subject of ornamentation among the Bétsiléo, I may notice that the window shutters of their houses, the wooden fixed bedstead—looking more like a cupboard than a sleeping-place—and other portions of the interior, are (or were) elaborately carved with the patterns already mentioned and other designs.[27]
In the early part of June we left the Bétsiléo capital for the south, intending if possible to make our way through the forest to the south-east coast, and thence travel to Fort Dauphine, the southernmost Hova military station. The route south from Fianàrantsòa is for many miles through a valley between lofty hills; and there one gradually ascends to a point where the valley ends, and at a place called Ivàtoàvo (“high rock”) one gets a most extensive prospect, of a comparatively level plain stretching away for many miles, and dotted all over with the green ring-shaped vàla or homesteads of the Bétsiléo. This plain is surrounded with the grandest and boldest mountains, many of them rising sheer from the level in many hundred feet of bare gneiss rock, and in the most picturesque outlines. To the north-west one lofty spire of rock has a flat-topped head, much resembling the Pieter Botha mountain in Mauritius. I was afterwards told that it was formerly obligatory on a young man wishing to marry a girl from the district that he should carry his bride on his back to the summit of this rock, and bring her down again. It appeared as if one might almost as well attempt to scale a church spire; but probably there are crevices and hollows which would make such a feat not altogether impossible.
Our Sunday at a village on the plain was employed in our usual way, preaching there, and visiting other places. After speaking at a short service myself, I left my companion at midday to go to Iàritsèna, a village about five hundred feet above the level; but it really looked insignificant compared with the towering rocks beyond it. The grand and varied forms of the mountains all around this plain filled me with an exultant kind of delight. To the south were a crowd of mountain-tops, peak beyond peak, with the greatest variety of outline: one had the appearance of a colossal truncated spire; another had a jagged saw-like ridge, another was like a pyramid with huge steps, and another was like an enormous dome; but the varieties were endless, and, as I passed along, the combinations of the giant masses of bare rock changed every minute. Their summits were never long free from clouds, and the changing effects of sunlight and cloud shadow could only have been caught by the rapid use of a camera. The summits of many of the peaks must be at least three thousand feet above the plain. These “everlasting hills,” these “strong foundations of the earth,” recalled passages in the Psalms and the Prophets, speaking of Him whose “righteousness is like the great mountains.”
At my little village congregation this afternoon, many of the girls and women wore a circular ornament suspended from their necks; this was formed of the end of a conus shell ground down and generally with a red bead in the centre. This kind of decoration, called félana, is also worn by men among the Sàkalàva, but on the side of their temples, and by the Bàra people on the crown of their heads.