88 I ROOTS. 



} 



slaves. The work is done with great rapidity, and yet it 



is difficult to understand how the enormous quantity of rice 

 required for the consumption of a great population can be 

 transplanted, every plant being placed separately in the 

 ground. The Hovas maintain that the rice would not come 

 to perfection unless thus transplanted. Some of the other 

 tribes, however, do not take this trouble, but sow their seed 

 sparingly on ground which has been merely trampled over by 

 oxen while wet. And the forest tribes cut down and burn 

 fresh portions of the woods year by year, and sow the rice in 

 the ashes on the sloping hill-sides. West of the capital city 

 of Antananarivo stretches a magnificent rice-plain, extending 

 with its ramifications nearly twenty miles north and south, 

 and more than ten miles east and west. When the rice is 

 freshly planted, and again when it is harvest-time, it presents 

 a beautiful spectacle : the villages on the low red-clay hills 

 rising like islands from a green or a golden sea. 



There are said to be eleven different kinds of rice known 

 in Madagascar, and one or more of the fine large -grained 

 varieties are reported to have been brought from South Caro- 

 lina by a vessel accidentally touching at one of the ports of 

 the island. 



After rice, perhaps the next most important vegetable food 

 of the Malagasy is mdngahdzo, the common manioc or cassava, 

 which is largely cultivated. The root consists almost entirely 

 of a starchy flour, and forms an insipid food when boiled. 

 Sweet potatoes, several kinds of beans, tomatoes, earth-nuts, 

 onions, and the green leaves of a great variety of small vege- 

 tables, are also eaten by the people. 



In the warmer parts of Madagascar a great variety of 

 yams are found, some kinds growing wild. One species of 

 edible root attains the size and thickness of a man's leg. 

 The inside is white, and has a milky juice ; it is soft as a 

 water-melon, but without seeds, and is eaten raw. From the 

 description given by Drury of this plant, which he calls 

 faungidge, it appears to be allied to that numerous class of 

 juicy roots found so plentifully in Southern Africa, and with- 

 out which many desert parts could not possibly be inhabited 

 by the tribes which are found there. 



