JOURNEYING IN MADAGASCAR. 245 



cold until midday, then positively roasted until about four in the 

 afternoon, when you again feel cold until your fire warms you at 

 night. You must have a fire, for, although the houses hereabouts 

 are built of mud bricks, they are by no means tight about doors 

 and roofs. While I was in Antananarivo, the weather was cool 

 and delightful morning and evening, perhaps a trifle too warm in 

 the middle of the day only. But the air was always clear and 

 bracing, and there was generally a light breeze blowing. 



Many of the hamlets were now surrounded by a deep ditch, a 

 huge fence of cactus, and a very wide low wall. They reminded 

 me at once of pictures of scenes in central Africa. The ditch 

 generally has some sort of drain, for fear of its overflowing during 

 the heavy rains of the wet season. The ground within the in- 

 closure is quite smooth and level, and the houses usually stand in 

 two rows right and left of the low and narrow entrance gate, 

 which is partially closed by a great stone slab or by piles of logs. 

 I stopped for the night in one of these villages, and was shown 

 quarters in a wretched hut half full of pigs. That is to say, I 

 was offered a room adjoining the pigsty, into which the door of 

 the house directly opened, while the people scrambled into the 

 dwelling room by a window about two feet square, to which they 

 mounted by a pile of rough stones. Upstairs there was a dirty 

 kitchen, to which you had access from the pigsty by a flight of 

 dark, narrow, steep steps in which there was a turn at right 

 angles, for otherwise the house was so small the steps would have 

 had to be vertical. Adjoining this kitchen was a room just large 

 enough to contain my camp bed, and this I accepted fleas and 

 all for, if I had to be in the same house as the pigs, at least I pre- 

 ferred another etage. All these villages seemed to allot a large 

 portion of their ground floors to a horrible little black and white 

 spotted pig. The infrequency of pigs on the east coast is more 

 than balanced by their frequency in the central districts. 



We continued on during all the next day in a sort of rough 

 valley bordered by ranges of hills. The soil was poor, the grass 

 was coarse, and there was much red clay. The country was very 

 thinly settled and few people were met upon the road. I stopped 

 for my lunch in one of the circular, ditched villages, in a very 

 dilapidated dirty hut in which the only door, as usual, opened di- 

 rectly into the pigsty, while the family scrambled through a little 

 bit of opening several feet from the ground. To facilitate the exit 

 of smoke two large holes had been made at either end of the roof. 

 This let in some daylight, which was much needed, but looked as 

 if much unneeded rain must enter by the same orifices. In the 

 center of the room next the piggery was a fire, and against the 

 walls a few cooking utensils, a rice mortar and pestle, a basket of 

 young squawking ducks, some rolls of matting, and a few clothes. 



