JOURNEYING IN MADAGASCAR. 247 



In one corner sat two little bright- eyed boys who were studying 

 from some paper-covered books their readers and spellers. I ob- 

 served 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 ex- 

 hibited the greatest alarm, and strove to marshal and drive away 

 their chickens. Apparently even a glimpse of civilization, as rep- 

 resented 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 An- 

 kozobe, pleasantly situated on a smooth hill, like the whole coun- 

 try 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 stria? 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 con- 

 ical 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 accord- 

 ingly 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 



