AN UNPLEASANT RIDE 237 



abouts, the doors seem generally to face the north or north-west, 

 and the house runs nearly east and west. Hova houses of the 

 old style, on the contrary, are always placed with their length 

 running north and south, and their single door and window 

 facing the west that is, on the lee-side of the house. 



As Ambinany, the Tanala 3 chief, whose village we were 

 bound for, did not make his appearance, we went off in the 

 afternoon to another village, lolomaka, about three or four 

 miles away to the south-east. It was a cold unpleasant ride 

 in the drizzling rain. We reached the village, which is situated 

 on a bare hill, in an hour and a quarter, and with some difficulty 

 found a tolerably level place on which to pitch the tent, but 

 everything was wet. The rain came down faster than ever, 

 and began to come through the canvas in some places. During 

 the afternoon we in our tent formed for the villagers a free, 

 and evidently popular, exhibition, which might have been en- 

 titled, " The Travelling Foreigners in their Tent." We and 

 our belongings, and our most trivial actions, were the subject 

 of intensest interest to the people. They came peeping in and, 

 uninvited, took their seats to gaze. I suspect they thought 

 we travelled in a style of Oriental magnificence, for my com- 

 panion's gorgeous striped rug evidently struck them as being 

 the ne plus ultra of earthly grandeur. But we did not look 

 upon ourselves this evening quite in that light ; for the slightly 

 higher ground on two sides of the tent led the water into the 

 structure, and there was soon a respectable-sized pool on my 

 friend's side of the tent, above which the boxes had to be raised 

 by stones and tent-hammers ; while the drip upon our beds 

 raised the probability that we might be able to take our 

 baths in the morning before getting up. It was our dampest 

 experience hitherto of tent life. 



The following evening found us at Ivohitrosa, after one of the 

 most difficult and fatiguing journeys we had ever taken in 

 Madagascar. It was quite dark when we arrived here, wet, 

 weary, muddy and hungry, having eaten no food since the 

 morning. 



But to begin at the beginning. Bed was so much the most 

 comfortable place, with a wet tent, a small pond at one end of 

 it, and a mass of mud at the other, that we did not turn out 

 so early or so willingly as usual, especially as there was a thick 



