178 CANOES AND BOATS. 



a spoon. These are dug into the water, the paddler sitting 

 with his face to the head of the canoe. With three or four 

 paddles and on smooth water these long canoes can be urged 

 through the water with great speed, but as they have no keel 

 they require careful ballasting. Very small canoes are used 

 in the narrow channels along the sides of the rice-fields to 

 convey the sheaves to the threshing-floors on the neighbouring 

 hi<Th "rounds. 



Few things are more pjleasant than a canoe voyage on 

 some of the large rivers of Madagascar, always providing 

 that you have a good canoe and a sufficient staff of paddlers. 

 The men often beguile the time by singing their musical and 

 often amusing canoe chants, in which one of them keeps up 

 a recitative, usually an improvised strain, often bringing' 

 in circumstances recently happening, and very frequently 

 introducing delicate flattery of the European employing them, 

 how generous and rich he is, &c., and inquiring if there is 

 not beef, and rice, and other food at the next stopping-place. 

 To this all the rest chime in with a chorus at regular 

 intervals, a favourite one being H4 ! misy vd ? ("Oh, is there 

 any ? ") In another one the chorus speaks of Tamatave as a 

 great place for spending money, while the recitative brings 

 in all the different villages on the journey from Tamatave to 

 the capital, and ends with the north entrance to the palace 

 at Antananarivo. In September 1877, I toolc a four days' 

 voyage down the river Betsiboka, encamping on the river- 

 bank at night ; and the heat and some insect plagues were 

 the only drawbacks to a very delightful excursion, during 

 which we glided over the smooth surface of the stream with 

 the strong current, and the glorious vegetation — pandanus 

 and palm and bamboo — swept past us like a continuous 

 panorama, all glowing in the intense light and heat of the 

 tropical sunshine. 



A very primitive contrivance called a zdliitra is employed 

 upon many of the rivers on the south-east coast. This con- 

 sists of a number of bamboos lashed together at one end and 

 spreading out in a fan form at the other. But when the 

 sovereign has occasion to cross a wide river a kind of raft 

 of zozoro or papyrus is constructed, this being the ancient 



