291 VISITS TO MADAGASCAR. chap. xr. 



A young officer, travelling from the capital to the coast, 

 stopped at my house to-day, to offer any assistance he could 

 render, as well as to hear and tell the news. He asked a 

 number of questions, and, amongst others, whether I could 

 make balloons; for he said there was a French resident at 

 the capital who could make balloons go up in the air, with 

 fire inside, and could make looking-glasses, and cast cannon. 

 When I acknowledged my inferiority to the French gentle- 

 man in all these respects, he added : " But you can take 

 likenesses, for I have seen some, and you have medicine." 

 He had brought me a trifling present, and asked for a little 

 medicine for the fever, which I promised to send him. When 

 he shook hands with me on leaving, I could not but pity the 

 poor fellow, for his hand was burning with fever at the time. 

 The natives, from the high and healthy provinces in the 

 interior, suffer in the low regions of the covmtry quite as 

 much as Europeans do from the fever, of which they enter- 

 tain great dread. 



The next morning we resumed our journey. The road 

 out of the village was quite as bad as that by which we had 

 entered. In descending the hill my bearers sank nearly 

 knee deep in mud, and, on reaching the bottom, they had to 

 cross a wide piece of water reaching up to their waists, and 

 then make their way along the edges of a series of soft- 

 flooded rice grounds. This was the only road from the vil- 

 lage. We next crossed a succession of low, clayey hills, and 

 their intervening valleys, where the watercourse at the 

 bottom was often widened out to join a rice plantation. 

 Voitsara, the first village we passed, was almost surrounded 

 by plantations, fenced with stakes of a fine species of er}i;h- 

 rina, many of which seemed to have taken root in the 

 prolific soil, and thus sent forth large branches, bearing 

 numerous clusters of rich, scarlet flowers. 



At the next village, Maroomby, considerable portions of 



