2 4 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



bringing their supplies in canoes to market. Squatting by the 

 banks of many of the rice fields were natives armed with guns with 

 which to kill the numerous birds that eat the young growing rice. 

 The Betsiboka River is here about fifty feet wide in the dry 

 season, but so high and powerful does it become in the wet season 

 that it has to be restrained in its bed by a huge levee of earth 

 some fifty feet in width. On the top of this lay our road for many 

 miles. The other great embankments crossing the plain were 

 nearly covered with mud-walled dwellings. We next reached the 

 banks of the Ikopa, here only a muddy stream about fifty feet 

 wide but one of the largest rivers of Madagascar, whose general 

 course I was now to follow, though at some distance to the east- 

 ward, until I reached the sea. I soon left the plain and entered 

 upon a country similar in general character to that found east of 

 the capital, except that the treeless moors were smoother and the 

 road far better. For a long way I enjoyed fine views of Antana- 

 narivo, sitting proudly upon her Acropolis, and then, crossing a 

 high ridge, she was gone, to be seen by me no more. Afterward 

 we passed at some distance a great bazaar or weekly market like 

 the Zoma of the metropolis, being held on the top of one of the 

 great smooth downs. The thousands of white shrouded figures 

 collected there were a queer sight. I stopped to eat my lunch in 

 a little roadside hut, and rested upon a comfortable mattress made 

 of palm-leaf ribs and covered with straw matting. On the wall 

 hung a sort of fiddle, with two strings stretched upon a small 

 gourd. The doorway of this hut was only three feet in height, 

 and I had almost to go on " all fours " in order to enter. A very 

 old decrepit woman was the only one about, though I had noticed 

 others in other huts. The sole occupations of these poor old 

 creatures consist in sitting in the sun and gazing at nothing, or, 

 while lying half asleep on a mat, in driving chickens from the 

 rooms with a long pole or with simple hisses. As the doors are 

 always wide open and the fowls always in search of scraps of 

 food, the crones are not idle, at least when inside the huts. No 

 one seems to pay any attention to these reminiscences of humanity, 

 and they themselves appear to wait only for reluctant Nature to 

 dissolve. Going on, there were many outcroppings of granite 

 now to be seen and many curiously shaped erratic bowlders. One 

 hill looked like the round dome of an observatory, another like 

 an ordinary haystack. Everywhere possible rice terraces were 

 placed, and there were many small cultivated fields, but before 

 night the country had become quite deserted, and the road after 

 those to which I had been accustomed was positively lonesome. 

 The strong, pitiless wind which unobstructed sweeps these moors 

 added to this feeling. Traveling at this season is very trying 

 also, for as you sit so long in your filanzana you are chilled and 



