MARKETS 117 



the day ; here are turkeys, geese, ducks and fowls by the 

 hundred ; here are great heaps of rice, both in the husk, and 

 either partially cleaned, as " red rice," or perfectly so, as 

 " white rice " ; here are piles of brown locusts, heaps of minute 

 red shrimps, and baskets of snails, all used as " relishes " for 

 the rice ; here is mdngahdzo, or manioc root, both cooked and 

 raw, as well as sweet potatoes, earth-nuts, arum roots (saonjo) 

 and many kinds of green vegetables, and also capsicums, 

 chillies and ginger. In another quarter are the stalls for 

 cottons and prints, sheetings and calicoes from Europe, as well 

 as native-made cloths of hemp, rofia fibre, cotton and silk ; and 

 not far away are basketfuls and piles of snowy or golden- 

 coloured cocoons of native silk for weaving. Here is the iron- 

 mongery section, where good native-made nails, rough hinges, 

 and locks and bolts, knives and scissors can be bought ; and 

 formerly were the sellers of the neat little scales of brass or iron, 

 with their weights for weighing the " cut money," which 

 formed the small change of the Malagasy before foreign occupa- 

 tion. (The five-franc pieces were cut up in pieces of all shapes 

 and sizes, so that buying and selling were very tedious matters.) 

 Then we come to the vendors of the strong and cheap mats and 

 baskets, made from the tough peel of the zozoro papyrus, and 

 from various kinds of grass, often with graceful interwoven 

 patterns. Yonder a small forest of upright pieces of wood 

 points out the timber market, where beams and rafters, joists 

 and boarding can be purchased, as well as bedsteads, chairs and 

 doors. Not far distant from this is the place where large 

 bundles of her ana sedge, arranged in sheets or " leaves," as the 

 Malagasy call them, for roofing, can be bought ; and near these 

 again are the globular water-pots or siny for fetching and for 

 storing water. But it would occupy too much space to enu- 

 merate all the articles for sale in an Imerina market. Before the 

 French occupation it was not uncommon to see slaves exposed 

 for sale, but happily that and slavery are now things of the past. 

 In the old times of Malagasy independence there were few 

 more interesting scenes than that presented by a great national 

 assembly or Kabary. These were summoned when new laws 

 were made, or a new government policy was announced, and 

 also when war was imminent with France, both in 1882 and 

 again in 1895. On such occasions the large triangular central 



