124 TEMPERATURE 



stretches over the northern sky ; higher up is the Northern 

 Crown ; the Pleiades, 2 and Orion with his many brilliant 

 neighbours, are overhead ; the Southern Cross, with its con- 

 spicuous " pointers " in the Centaur, is high in the southern 

 heavens ; and the Magellan Clouds are clearly seen nearer the 

 horizon ; and all across the firmament is the Galaxy, or, as the 

 Malagasy call it, the efi-taona, " the division," or " separation 

 of the year." And then, as the circling year revolves, the great 

 serpentine curve of Scorpio appears, and Sirius, Capella, 

 Canopus, and many another glorious lamp of heaven light up 

 the midnight sky with their flashing radiance. 



The month of August, the closing one in this review of the 

 year, is often the coldest month of all, cold, that is, for a country 

 within the tropics. All through August the keen south-eastern 

 trades generally blow strong, and although in sheltered places 

 the afternoon sun may be quite warm, the mornings and even- 

 ings are very cold, and during the night the mercury will often 

 descend to very near the freezing-point. The mornings are 

 frequently misty ; on some days there are constant showers of 

 erika or drizzly rain, alternating with bright sunny days and 

 clear skies ; these latter seem the very perfection of weather, 

 bracing and health-giving. But this cold weather often brings 

 disease to the Malagasy, especially a kind of malarial fever, 

 which sometimes attacks great numbers of them, and also 

 brings affections of the throat and chest, to which many fall 

 victims. At such times their thin cotton clothing seems ill 

 adapted for protection against the climate. This circumstance 

 has often struck me as showing how difficult it is to change the 

 habits of a people ; for centuries past the Hova have lived in 

 this cool highland region, yet, until very lately, few compara- 

 tively have made much change in their dress, which was well 

 enough adapted for the purely tropical region from which 

 they originally came, but very unfitted for the cool air of the 

 winter months of a country about five thousand feet above 

 sea-level. 



The great rice-plain to the west of the capital and all the 

 broader valleys still lie fallow, although in various places 

 extensive sheets of water show that irrigation is commencing. 

 In the lesser valleys and at the edge of the larger rice-plains the 

 landscape is enlivened by the bright green of the ketsa grounds, 



