Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/257

Rh In one corner sat two little bright-eyed boys who were studying from some paper-covered books—their readers and spellers. I observed that they had also a catechism and a small Testament. All were of course in the Malagasy language. They had also a slate which was used for writing their exercises. I took a little stroll afterward among the houses, and was surprised and amused to see how frightened the chickens were at my approach. I had expected this of the few curs about, but hardly of the fowls. The hens exhibited the greatest alarm, and strove to marshal and drive away their chickens. Apparently even a glimpse of civilization, as represented in my humble self, was altogether too much for these creatures, so naturally more distrustful than their owners, who cheerfully look at everything foreign but will adopt nothing.

During the afternoon we passed through the large village of Ankozobe, pleasantly situated on a smooth hill, like the whole country hereabouts entirely devoid of trees. The people burn a small reed for their cooking, and charge the same price for this as for firewood. Just outside the capital a great field is covered with huge bundles of this reed, there kept for sale. Nearly all the houses of Ankozobe were built in the shape of wall tents—i. e., they had mud walls two or three feet high, upon which directly rested the high-peaked grass roofs. The governor came from his house to invite me to rest and partake of some refreshment, but I was obliged to decline his hospitality, wishing to reach a certain town before dark. This was called Ambatvarana, with deep, wide moat and a square full of cattle. Pigs swarmed everywhere. Just to the westward was a magnificent great mass of gneiss, with precipitous sides showing vertical striæ which looked like the basaltic columns of the Giant's Causeway of Ireland. The range ends a little to the northward of the village in a vast dome of gneiss, with a big conical top which itself rises all of a thousand feet above the roughly undulating plain. It is called Mount Angavo. The highest point is said to be 4,880 feet above sea level, or about one hundred feet above the site of Antananarivo. I visited several houses in this village that were tendered me, but each seemed worse than the other. Finally, I accepted a room in one, on condition that the pigs should sleep away from home for that night. After putting up my camp bed and mosquito-netting, I found I could not get in all my very limited baggage and myself at the same time unless I suspended the most of the former from the walls, which accordingly I did, having driven wooden pegs into the interstices of the mud bricks. The upper floor into which the family were crowded was reached by a vertical bamboo ladder. Soon after lying down for the night I heard so much noise in the pigsty that I was afraid my hostess had forgotten her promise. On searching I did not, it is true, discover any pigs, but there were a cat, a litter of pups, and