18 ROADS AND TRAVELLING 



nearly fifty years' connection with this country the writer has 

 travelled over it in many directions, and while his chief time 

 and energies have of course been given to missionary effort, he 

 has always taken a deep interest in the living creatures which 

 inhabit the island, as well as in its luxuriant flora, and has 

 always been collecting information about them. The facts 

 thus obtained are embodied in the following pages. 



It is probably well known to most readers of this book that 

 a railway now connects Tamatave, the chief port of the east 

 coast, with Antananarivo, the capital, which is about a third of 

 the way across the island. So that the journey from the coast 

 to the interior, which, up to the year 1899, used to take from 

 eight to ten days, can now be accomplished in one day. Be- 

 sides this, good roads now traverse the country in several 

 directions, so that wheeled vehicles can be used ; and on some 

 of these a service of motor cars keeps up regular communication 

 with many of the chief towns and the capital. 



But we shall not, in these pages, have much to do with these 

 modern innovations, for a railway in Madagascar is very much 

 like a railway in Europe. Our journeys will mostly be taken 

 by the old-fashioned native conveyance, the filanjdna or light 

 palanquin, carried by four stout and trusty native bearers. 

 We shall thus not be whirled through the most interesting portion 

 of our route, catching only a momentary glimpse of many a 

 beautiful scene. We can get down and walk, whenever we like, 

 to observe bird or beast or insect, to gather flower or fern or 

 lichen or moss, or to take a rock specimen, things utterly 

 impracticable either by railway or motor car, and not very easy 

 to do in any wheeled conveyance. Our object will be, not to 

 get through the journey as fast as possible, but to observe all 

 that is worth notice during the journey. We shall therefore, 

 in this style of travel, not stay in modern hotels, but in native 

 houses, notwithstanding their drawbacks and discomforts ; and 

 thus we shall see the Malagasy as they are, and as their ancestors 

 have been for generations gone by, almost untouched by 

 European influence, and so be able to observe their manners 

 and customs, and learn something of their ideas, their super- 

 stitions, their folk-lore, and the many other ways in which they 

 differ from ourselves. 

 Let us, however, first try to get a clear notion about this great 



