TRIP TO MADAGASCAR — LACROIX. 381 



outside the beaten tracks, a forest whose glades set in great trees are 

 peopled with niany-colored birds and agde lemurs. 



The few habitations along the path that led me there were no 

 longer the small white molded clay houses of Imerina, but light 

 wooden huts built on piles. The landscape is no more enlivened l^y 

 the white "lambas" of the Hova; the natives that roam in the woods 

 are half nude; they are the Tanalas with hairy faces. 



The washing of the alluvia with the aid of primitive sluices and the 

 "bat6e/' still more primitive, yields, with some gold, many crystals 

 of corundum ^ much rolled. Most of them are opaque but some are 

 transparent. By an irony of nature, that does not fail to rise again, 

 and not without bitterness, the prospector, who kindly allowed us 

 to visit his works — it is the uncolored corundum which forms the largest 

 crystals — could weigh them up to 500 grams. 



Theii' limpidity is so perfect that they might well be classed as 

 magnificent precious stones, but of a difficult setting; nevertheless 

 the least among them would bring a fortune if it had the color of the 

 smallest rubies and sapphh'es which accompanies them. 



In order to find the deposits rich in rubies, and especially in sap- 

 phires, you must climb toward the north on the volcanic massif of 

 Ankaratra, where are worked some basaltic alluvia containing debris 

 of granitic subtraction, the original som'ce of the crystals of cormi- 

 dums and zircons which accompany them.- 



Such are the precious stones of Madagascar, numerous, varied, and 

 beautiful. Beryls, tourmalines, kunzite, spessartite, and uncolored 

 corundum, in jDarticular, could cope tlu'ough their limpidity, their 

 color, and their brilliancy with similar gems of the best known 

 deposits of Brazil, of Ceylon, of California. Some of them, the rose 

 beryls and the yellow tourmalines, for example, are unrivaled through- 

 out the world. They need only to be known. As the new comes to 

 everything, so these must conquer their right to live. I have the 

 pleasure of presenting these to you in recognition of the pleasures that 

 their study and their pvu'suit has afforded me in traversing the vast 

 solitary places of the high plateaus illuminated by the clear sky of 

 the southern winter, in traversing the somber vaults and dense 

 forest. 



1 The corundum crystals of this deposit are at times transformed into alisolutely round pcbl)lcs, and 

 moreover, (Yora the situation of Ifempina and the position of the point situated up ihe stream where they 

 commence to find them, they can roll on a course only a few kilometers. It is true that the valley is very 

 winding, hoiiowed between cliffs of granite and gneiss; Ihcy could Le used on the spot as some sort of caul- 

 drons for giants. 



■'' By their properties and their kind of deposition these stones are identical witli those of \'elay (Kspaly 

 near Le Pay and Le Coupet;. 



