78 DAMAGE BY STORMS 



some of the early kings of Imerina, it has become the finest rice- 

 plain of the island and, with its connected valleys, furnishes 

 the bulk of the food of the people of the central province. 



The embankments require, of course, constant attention 

 during the rainy season, when the river is swollen by the 

 heavy rains ; and during the time of the native regime, an 

 unusually wet season would cause them to give way, so that the 

 rice-fields were flooded. At such times the whole population 

 would be called out to help in stopping the breaches, and I 

 remember one occasion, a Sunday, when we had no afternoon 

 service, and with others of my brother missionaries I spent 

 several hours in carrying sods and stones, together with our 

 people. Another such calamity occurred in January 1893 ; 

 for on the night of Saturday, the 28th, and the following day, 

 there was an unusually heavy storm, doing immense damage, 

 destroying hundreds of houses and village churches, and 

 breaking the river banks, so that in a day or two hundreds of 

 thousands of acres of the great rice-plain were under water, 

 three or four feet deep. In some parts it was difficult to trace 

 the river banks ; it was " water, water everywhere," and scores 

 of low hills were again turned into islands, cut off from all 

 communication, except by canoe, with the world around them. 

 If one could have forgotten the terrible loss to the people of their 

 crops of rice just ready to be cut, it was a most beautiful scene, 

 and reminded one that in ancient times this great plain was 

 always a lake, when many now extinct animals, reptiles and 

 gigantic birds found a home in it and on its shores. For 

 centuries the heavy rains probably far heavier then than now, 

 from the greater extent of forest went on filling up the valleys 

 with the rich black and blue loam ; gradually the lake became 

 less and less deep ; slowly the river cut out its bed ; and then 

 man came on the scene, and the old native kings aided nature 

 by embanking the river ; the marshes became rice-fields and 

 supplied with food the present large population which lives all 

 around it. 



From this elevated point at least a hundred small towns and 

 villages can be recognised, many of them marked by the tiled 

 roof, and often the tower, of the village church, which shines 

 out distinctly amid the brown thatched roofs of most of the 

 houses. This view from the summit of the capital is certainly 



