60 FOREST REGIONS 



it was so early in the afternoon, but we found our men so 

 exhausted that we were obliged to stay there for the rest of the 

 day. 



Here it may be noted that we had now entered some way into 

 the lower and wider of the two belts of dense forest which 

 extend for several hundred miles along the eastern side of 

 Madagascar, and cover the mountains which form the great 

 ramparts of the highland of the interior. There is continuous 

 forest from nearly the north of the island to almost the southern 

 extremity ; its greatest width is about fifty miles, north of 

 Antongil Bay ; but to the south of the Antsihanaka province 

 it divides into two. Of these two belts, the upper one, which 

 clothes the edge of the highland, is the narrowest, being not 

 much above ten or twelve miles across, but the lower belt is 

 from twice to three times that breadth. On the western side 

 of Madagascar there is no such continuous line of forest ; there 

 are, it is true, many extensive portions covered with wood, but 

 in many places the vegetation consists more of scattered 

 clumps of trees ; while in the south-west, which is the driest 

 part of the island, the prevailing trees and shrubs are euphorbia, 

 and are spiny hi character. Mr Baron reckoned that an area 

 of nearly thirty thousand square miles of the whole surface is 

 forest-covered country. We shall have other opportunities of 

 examining these extensive forest regions, so all we need say 

 further at present about them is, that no one with any eye for 

 the beautiful and wonderful can pass through them without 

 astonishment and delight. The variety and luxuriance of the 

 foliage, the great height of many of the trees, the countless 

 creeping and climbing plants that cover their trunks and 

 branches, the multitude of lianas that bind everything together 

 in a maze of cordage and ropes, the flowers which sometimes 

 cover whole trees with a mass of colour, crimson, or golden, or 

 purple all these make a journey through these Madagascar 

 forests a new pleasure and lead one to exclaim : " O Lord, how 

 manifold are Thy works ! " 



We were now also ascending towards the central highland of 

 the interior, which lies at an elevation of from five to six 

 thousand feet above the sea-level. Above this general eleva- 

 tion, which, however, is broken up by lesser hills and mountains 

 in all directions, so that there is no level country except what 



