204 THE HOUSE AS A SUNDIAL. 



A king may also have another door on the west side at the 

 north corner. The doorways mostly reach the ground in the 

 worst kind of houses, but are about a foot or more from the 

 ground in the better kind. They are very small and narrow : 

 my tin boxes are fourteen inches wide, but it was only on 

 one or two occasions that we could get them into the houses 

 without turning them on the side, the depth of the boxes 

 being ten inches." "^^ 



A native account, written by a Hova officer, gives much 

 the same information as to these Bkra houses in a somewhat 

 different part of the country they inhabit; for he says their 

 houses are about nine feet long, and only about six wide, and 

 the height only just so that a person can stand in them : and 

 the doors are so narrow that one is oblifred to wriwle in 

 sideways, as well as to stoop. Xot only so, but they make 

 their cattle-folds adjoining the house, so that the dung spreads 

 all over the house, and it becomes almost unbearable in-doors. 



The Native, House a Com'pa&s and Sundial. — Owing, pro- 

 bably, to the invariable north and south arrangement of Hova 

 houses, it is common to use the points of the compass in 

 speaking of the position of tilings in a dwelling, rather than 

 to describe them as "left" or "right." Articles placed on 

 the table or on a shelf would be defined by them according 

 to their north and south, or east and west positions. 



From the invariable position of Hova houses, and the 

 usual absence of clocks and watches, there has arisen the 

 habit of describing the difierent hours of the day by the parts 

 of the house where the rays of the sun touch on his course 

 from east to west. Thus, about nine o'clock in the forenoon 

 is mitatao haratra, " to come (that is, the sim) above the 

 purlin " (of the roof). Noon is mitatao wvonana, " to come 

 above the ridge," i.e., when the sun is vertical, just as at nine 

 o'clock it is at an angle of forty-five degrees or about square 

 with the slope of the roof. Then at about one o'clock is 'mit- 

 sldik'andro, " the peeping in of the day," i.e., when the sun 

 begins to shine in a little at the open door as he commences 

 to decline from the zenith. Towards two o'clock is called 



* Lights and Shadoivs ; or, Chequered Experiences among some of the Heathen 

 Tribes of Madagascar, jip. iv. v. Appendix i. 



