268 PRIMITIVE DISHES AND SPOONS 



with the greatest alacrity. Yesterday, when the feast was 

 being cooked, he sat in the courtyard, gun in hand, shooting 

 first a fowl, then a pigeon, and then a pig, all of which, in 

 addition to what was already preparing, he ordered to be in- 

 stantly cooked with the rest. They also say that he is very 

 rich, owning five hundred cattle and two hundred slaves, and 

 that he is always most hospitable to all strangers. Certainly 

 we found him to be so. Besides the abundant kindness he 

 showed us at Ankarana, he sent with us an escort and guides, 

 twelve soldiers, two officers, and a drummer, besides as many 

 baggage bearers as we required to replace the men who were 

 ill. 



We were interested to find that many of our bearers met with 

 relatives in these coast provinces. The mothers of several of 

 them were brought up from these parts as slaves, when children, 

 in Radama's cruel wars. The most remarkable circumstance 

 was that our cook discovered that one of the governor's wives 

 at Ankarana was his mother's sister. And at the same place 

 another of our men found that the chief people of the Taisaka 

 village were his mother's brothers. 



Our lodging on the evening of the day we left Ankarana was 

 in another sample of the " well-dunged village," although we 

 procured a tolerably good house in it. While taking lunch in 

 one of the other villages, we noticed the primitive dishes and 

 spoons used by the people. The former consist of the strong 

 tough leaf of the pandanus-tree, which is doubled over at one 

 end so as to retain rice or liquid. The spoons are pieces of the 

 leaf of the traveller's tree, folded up so as easily to carry food 

 to the mouth. This pandanus has a fruit, yellow in colour, and 

 something in shape and size like a pineapple without its tuft 

 of leaves. When dry it is brown in colour, and each hexagonal 

 division when separated from the rest is like a tough wooden 

 peg, and utterly uneatable. 



Outside a village called laborano I noticed the first appearance 

 of anything like a funeral memorial we have seen since leaving 

 Betsileo. This consisted of four poles placed in a line, the two 

 outer ones higher than the others, and the inner ones pointed 

 in a peculiar fashion. These serve the same purpose as the 

 upright stones called tsdngam-bdto in Imerina. All through 

 the Tanala country and along this south-eastern coast we 



