We found that the best dwelling in the village was ready, and a bright fire blazing on the hearth. It was with some difficulty that we got all our baggage arranged inside, for, although the largest house available, it was rather smaller than our tent, and nearly a quarter of it was occupied by the hearth and the space around it. At one side of the fire were sitting four young women, the daughters of the chief. A glance at these young ladies showed us that we had come into the territory of a tribe different from any we had yet seen. They were lightly clothed in a fine mat wrapped round their waists, but were highly ornamented on their heads, necks, and arms. A fillet of small white beads, an inch or so wide, was round their heads, fastened by a circular metal plate on their foreheads. From their necks hung several necklaces of long oval white beads and smaller red ones. On their wrists they had silver rings, and a sort of broad bracelet of small black, white, and red beads; and on every finger and on each thumb were rings of brass wire. In the glancing firelight they certainly made a striking picture of barbaric ornamentations; and notwithstanding their dark skins and numerous odd little tails of hair, some of them were comely enough. We had soon to ask them to retire in order to stow away our packages and get some tea ready. The house was raised a foot or so from the ground, the inside lined with mats, and so was a pleasant change from our damp lodgings of the previous evening.

RICE-HOUSES

Next morning, on opening our window, we had before us, two or three miles across the great basin or valley, three waterfalls, one descending in a long white line and almost lost in spray before it reaches the bottom. The sunlight revealed all the beauties of the scene around us, and made us long for the power to transfer to canvas or paper its chief outlines. Were such a neighbourhood as this in an accessible part of any European country, it would rapidly become famous for its scenery. We found the village of Ivòhitròsa to consist of twelve houses only, enclosed within a ròva of pointed stakes; but besides these are several rice-houses or tràno àmbo (“high houses”) mounted on posts five or six feet above the ground, each post having a circular wooden ring just under the flooring rafters, and projecting eight or nine inches, so as to prevent the rats ascending and helping themselves to rice. I sincerely wished last night that the dwelling-houses had a similar arrangement, for the rats had a most jovial night of it in our lodgings, being doubtless astonished at the number and variety of the packages just arrived. The house we are in, as well as others in the village, has carved horns at the gables, not the crossed straight timbers so called in Hova houses, but curved like bullocks’ horns. The people appear to have no slaves here, for the daughters of the chief, in all their ornaments, are pounding rice, four at one mortar.

At this part of the island the high interior plateau seems to descend by one great step to the coast plains, and not by two, as it does farther north; for our aneroid told us that we came down twenty-five hundred feet yesterday, and that the stream at the foot of this hill is only five hundred or six hundred feet above sea-level. And the two lines of forest one crosses farther on are here united into one.

The men and many of the women wear a rather high round skull-cap made of fine plait; the women wear little except a mat sewn together at the ends, so as to form a kind of sack, and fastened by a cord round the waist, and only occasionally pulled up high enough to cover the bosom. Those who are nursing infants have also a small figured mat about eighteen inches square on their backs and suspended by a cord from the neck; this is called lòndo, and is used to protect the child from the sun or rain, as it lies in a fold of the mat above the girdle. Some of the men wear a mat as a làmba, and only a few have làmbas of coarse rofìa or hemp cloth. The people here blacken their teeth with a root, which gives them an unpleasant appearance as they open their mouths; not all the teeth, however, are thus disfigured, but chiefly those at the back, leaving the front ones white; in some cases the lower teeth are alternately black and white.

The morning of one of our four days at Ivòhitròsa was employed in trying to get a good view of the largest of the waterfalls which pour down into the large valley already mentioned. Mounting a spur of the main hills, we had a good view of this chief fall up a deep gorge to the south, and so opening into the main valley as not to be visible from the village. This is certainly a most magnificent fall of water. The valley ends in a semicircular wall of rock crowned by forest, and over this pours at one leap the river Màtitànana. Knowing the heights of some of the neighbouring hills, we judged that the fall could not be less than from five hundred to six hundred feet in depth, and from the foot rises a continual cloud of spray, like smoke, with a roar which reverberates up the rocky sides of the valley; even from two or three miles’ distance, which was as near as we could get, it was a very grand sight.

MALAGASY RASPBERRIES

While on this little excursion we had a feast of another kind. On our way home we came across a large cluster of bushes full of wild raspberries. This fruit is common on the borders of the forest, but we never before saw it in such quantities, or of so large a size, or of so sweet a taste. The Malagasy raspberry is a beautiful scarlet fruit, larger than the European kind; and while perhaps not quite equal in flavour to those grown in England, is by no means to be despised; and we were able on that day to enjoy it to our heart’s content.

A Group of Tanàla Girls in Full Dress