228 VISITS TO MADAGASCAR chap. ix. 



purpose of public religious worship and instruction, had been 

 erected by the people, who were again gathering to the 

 settlement after the dispersion and devastation of the war. 

 The people were living in temporary huts. Several of them 

 had hung their crops of maize on the branches of trees, or on 

 frames of wood, adjacent to their dwellings. We walked 

 through their grounds, crossed the Kat river, and proceeded 

 some distance, through enclosures of maize and Caffre corn, 

 up to a high mountain in the neighbourhood called Beacon 

 Hill. The day was clear, and, on reaching the summit, we 

 enjoyed an extensive view of the country around, comprising 

 mountain, wood, valley, plain, and winding stream, altogether 

 a beautiful and fertile country. This was formerly the 

 residence of Gaika, more recently of Macoi^o his son. A 

 portion of it was occupied by a number of Fingoes ; but, still 

 more recently, a great part of it has been given away in farms 

 of 1500 acres or more to colonial farmers. 



I found, during the walk, many new bulbs; and saw, on 

 the banks of the Kat river, some gigantic euphorbias, so 

 numerous as to constitute the chief objects along the steep 

 and woody borders of the stream. Some of them were thirty 

 or forty feet high, and two feet thick at the base. Near a 

 place called Gaika's Kraal, I could not refrain from remaining 

 behind to sketch one or two of these singular trees, as well as 

 to dig up bulbs, and gather seeds of a beautiful passion-flower 

 and species of creeper bearing a bright orange-flower, appa- 

 rently Geplialandra quinqueloha. In several places the 

 bright scarlet flowers of the Tecoma capensis added greatly 

 to the richness of the woody scenery of the neighbourhood. 



As a drawback to the pleasure derived from these beautiful 

 objects, we passed on the same route the body of a large dead 

 puff-adder, a venomous snake very numerous here. Mr. Van 

 Eoyer requested us to keep on the windward side of it, as it 

 was supposed that the effluvium from it was injurious. He 



