8 THE ODYSSEY OF AN ANIMAL COLLECTOR 
mass of floating vegetation with just their heads protruding, and 
sometimes one would disappear as if diving for food. 
On the west side of the lake there is a fringe of reeds several 
miles wide, and unless one knows the channels well it is easy. to 
get completely lost in a maze with apparently no way out. I once 
made the trip with a missionary to an isolated shore-side village 
called Anororo. As the wind in the afternoon can be treacherous 
to small craft, we made the voyage at daybreak when all was calm. 
It was a large dugout canoe with four paddlers and was full of 
Malagasy natives returning with purchases they had made in ex- 
change for dried fish. We crossed the open water in about two 
hours and then entered the vast reed-beds, and as we threaded 
our way through winding channels we passed several tiny in- 
habited islands—some so small that the few reed-huts on them 
left little room except for beaching the canoes. The people in these 
places gain their livelihood by catching fish and fresh-water 
shrimps—the former are smoked and the latter sun-dried and then 
exchanged for rice and cloth, etc. 
The fish were caught with rod and line by using either paste 
prepared from cassava root, or worms, as bait. The swollen leaf- 
stalks of the water-hyacinths, the interiors of which are made up 
of loose spongy tissue, are invariably used as floats as they are as 
buoyant as any cork. 
The women spend their time in making mats from young 
papyrus reeds. These are always in demand as they are used for 
floor coverings as well as beds in almost every Malagasy hut. 
The numerous swamp-warblers in the reed-beds provided us 
with plenty of music, but the greatest joy came fom watching 
the beautiful Madagascar Bee-eaters perched in favorable positions 
on the edges of clumps of papyrus, and darting over the water 
every now and then to catch flying insects. 
It seems opportune to say something of the curious reed-dwell- 
ing mammals of the lake, though it was later that I became 
familiar with them. The most conspicuous mammals in Mada- 
gascar are its lemurs, but these are almost entirely inhabitants of 
the forests, though the Ring-tailed Lemur is more baboon-like in 
its habits, wandering in troops over the ground in fairly open 
spaces. Lemurs are rather monkey-like in their mode of life and 
