CHAPTER III 



FROM COAST TO CAPITAL : ALONG THE SEASHORE 



TRAVELLING in Madagascar fifty years ago, and indeed 

 for many years after that date, differed considerably 

 from what we have any experience of in Europe. It 

 was not until the year 1901 that a railway was commenced from 

 the east coast to the interior, and it is only a few months ago 

 that direct communication by rail has been completed between 

 Tamatave and Antananarivo. But until the French occupation, 

 in 1895, a road, in our sense of the word, did not exist in the 

 island ; and all kinds of merchandise brought from the coast 

 to the interior, or taken between other places, were carried for 

 great distances on men's shoulders. There were but three 

 modes of conveyance viz. one's own legs, the Idkana or canoe, 

 and the filanjdna or palanquin. We intended to make use of 

 all these means of getting over the ground (and water) ; but by 

 far the greater part of the journey of two hundred and twenty 

 miles would be performed in the filanjdna, carried on the sinewy 

 shoulders of our bearers or mdromlta. This was the conveyance 

 of the country (and it is still used a good deal) ; for during the 

 first thirty years and more of my residence in Madagascar 

 there was not a single wheeled vehicle of any kind to be seen 

 in the interior, nor did even a wheelbarrow come under my 

 observation during that time. 



This want of our European means of conveyance arose from 

 the fact that no wheeled vehicles could have been used owing to 

 the condition of the tracks then leading from one part of the 

 country to another. The lightest carriage or the strongest 

 waggon would have been equally impracticable in parts of the 

 forest where the path was almost lost in the dense undergrowth, 

 and where the trees barely left room for a palanquin to pass. 

 Nor could any team take a vehicle up and down some of the tre- 

 mendous gorges, by tracks which sometimes wind like a cork- 

 27 



