182 PAPYRUS 



villages bordering the plain ; although a large proportion of the 

 area is still covered with marsh, reeds, rushes and papyrus. 

 From the rising ground we could count numerous herds of fine 

 cattle, generally from seventy to eighty in each herd, and 

 wherever we went we found cattle in great abundance feeding 

 on the rich pasture. Large numbers of these cattle belonged 

 to rich people in Imerina. One noble was said to have nearly 

 ten thousand ; others had five thousand ; many people had 

 a thousand, and the majority of the Sihanaka had at least a 

 hundred each. 



After our usual employments of school examination, conver- 

 sation with the pastor and others, and renewed presents of food, 

 on Friday morning we set off on our circuit round the plain to 

 visit as many of the congregations, and see as much of the 

 country and the position of the Sihanaka villages, as was possible 

 in six days, as our time was limited to that period. Proceeding 

 first westward, and skirting the edge of the level ground, we 

 passed for some distance through swamp, with dense thickets 

 of her ana and zozbro, the first being, as already seen in Imerina, 

 a strong sedge extensively used for roofing, and the other, a 

 species of papyrus, employed for a variety of purposes. This 

 latter grows here to a great size, some ten or twelve feet high, 

 with a triangular and exceedingly tough stem, about two and 

 a half inches each way, nearly double the size it attains in the 

 cooler Imerina province. 



We had to cross numerous little streams by rickety bridges 

 of plank. From the level of the rice-fields the plain stretched 

 northward like an immense green lake ; the rotundity of the 

 earth was as clearly seen from the perfect level as it is from the 

 surface of the sea, for the distant low hills appeared like de- 

 tached islands with nothing to connect their bases. Our course 

 lay west by north-west, cutting diagonally across several of 

 those promontories formed by the parallel lines of hills which 

 run down each side of the Ankay valley. Every village of the 

 Sihanaka has near its entrance a group of two or three tall 

 straight trunks of trees fixed in the ground, varying from 

 thirty to fifty feet in height ; the top of these has the appear- 

 ance of an enormous pair of horns, for the fork of a tree is fixed 

 to the pole, and each branch is sharpened to a fine point. 

 Besides these, there are generally half-a-dozen lower poles, on 



