UNLUCKY DAYS 205 



of hills, which here forms the eastern boundary of the plain. We 

 passed several large villages, and stopped for the night at a place 

 of forty or fifty houses, called Ambohimanga. 



In one of the villages situated in the dense papyrus thickets 

 which cover the marshes to the south of the lake, a place called 

 Anororo, lives a strange tribe of people who seem quite 

 isolated, not only in their dwelling-place, but also in their 

 barbarous habits, from the other Sihanaka, and who speak a 

 distinctly different dialect. In the rainy season, when the 

 water rises, it enters into the houses of these people, and they 

 then put together several layers of zozoro to form a kind of raft, 

 so that as the water rises, this raft rises with it. Upon these 

 zozoro they make their hearths and their beds ; and there they 

 live, rising and falling with the water, until the rainy season is 

 over and they can live on the ground again. There are some 

 curious stories about the simplicity of these people and their 

 fathers, for they have no intercourse with anyone outside their 

 village except on a certain day, when they go out to sell the 

 fish they have caught. These people appear to have no fewer 

 than eight unlucky days hi each month, so that during more 

 than a quarter of their time their superstition prevents them 

 from going about or engaging in any work. 



While speaking of unlucky days, it must be here noticed that 

 all over Antsihanaka, Thursday is considered as fddy (tabooed), 

 and no one will work their rice-fields on that day. To build 

 brick or clay houses is not permitted, death being the supposed 

 penalty in case of transgression. To use hemp also, either in 

 the form of cloth, or for smoking, is also universally tabooed. 

 And besides the fddy common to all Sihanaka, each family or 

 clan has inherited a set of fddy of its own, so that in addition to 

 the universal abstinence from work on Thursday, there will be 

 another day of the week on which nothing may be taken out of 

 the house, the mats may not be swept, etc. Various foods and 

 actions, too numerous to particularise, are fddy to certain 

 villages ; while considered quite harmless in some places, they 

 would bring all manner of evil in others. 



On Thursday morning we set off again, and after two hours' 

 journey along the east edge of the plain, left it and made a 

 straight course over the rice-fields for Ambatondrazaka, leaving 

 the great semicircular bay to the east of the town on our left. 



