276 A HEATHENISH FUNERAL 



during the next two and half days we had to travel to the north- 

 west, through the belt of dense forest covering the lines of 

 mountain which are the successive steps into the bare interior 

 highland. Through this rugged country, travelling was very 

 difficult, and the steep ascents very fatiguing. As we got up a 

 thousand feet, there was line after line of hill and mountain, 

 all covered with forest, as far as the eye could reach, to the 

 north and south and west. Besides the ordinary forest trees, 

 there were great numbers of the graceful palm called Anwona, 

 which, in the struggle for light and heat, here grows to a 

 great height. As we have seen in speaking of the old style 

 of timber houses, this palm was made much use of in 

 their construction. There were magnificent and extensive 

 views from the higher ground ; and conspicuous for a whole 

 day's journey was a lofty perpendicular cliff of bright red 

 rock, rising sheer up many hundreds of feet from the valley 

 below. 



A little before reaching the summit of one ridge we heard a 

 good deal of noise and shouting ahead of us, and supposed that 

 the Tanala were dragging an unusually large piece of timber. 

 On getting nearer, we found fifty or sixty people, men and 

 women, and a number of men carrying something, which, 

 coming closer to them, we found was a child's coffin, made of 

 a piece of the trunk of a tree hollowed out, and with a rough 

 cover of wood fastened on with bands of a strong creeper. This 

 was being carried with a barbarous kind of chant, but without 

 the slightest sign of mourning on the part of anyone. It was 

 the most heathenish kind of funeral we had ever seen. Among 

 these forest people funerals are called jandroritam-paty (lit. 

 " stretching out of the corpse "), and it seems that the coffin 

 is pulled about first in one direction and then in another 

 by the different parties of those following it ; and it is finally 

 thrown into some hollow in the woods. It was a saddening 

 sight. 



We found that we had come again among our old friends, the 

 Tanala, for in their mats and undressed appearance, and their 

 use of bark cloth, the women in the villages were just like those 

 we had seen from Ivohitrosa downwards. 



Our second day in the forest brought us to a height of 

 fourteen hundred and fifty feet above the sea ; and, not- 



