CHAP. XII. ROMANTIC APPEARANCE OF AMBATOMANGA. 337 



ing several feet beyond their junction at the apex of the roof, 

 like a couple of branches, or a pair of straight horns. 



In the centre of these houses was that of the chief, which, 

 from being the first of the kind I had seen, appeared all the 

 more remarkable. It might be about sixty feet long, and 

 half as wide. It was two stories high, with door and windows 

 in each story, and a steep roof with attic windows in the 

 sides and the ends. The side walls were sheltered by two 

 verandahs one above the other, and the posts which supported 

 the two verandahs were upwards of twenty feet higli. This 

 remarkable building, with walls of wood framed in diagonal 

 panels, roofed with shingles, spacious, more than double the 

 height of any of the other houses, and European and attractive 

 in its form, was standing upon the highest spot in the village, 

 surrounded by a wall, and imparting altogether a peculiar 

 character to the whole place. 



To the north of the village, and connected ■w^th it by 

 a narrow joath, and apparently enclosed within the same 

 walls, there was an immense pile of naked granite rock, 

 extending upwards of two hundred feet high, and as many 

 broad. A solitary house, with thick stone walls and thatched 

 roof, croA^Tied its summit. A tall bamboo cane, with a piece 

 of cloth fluttering in the breeze, and one or two stunted 

 shrubs growing on one side near the edge, were the only other 

 objects I could see. The name of the village, Ambatomanga, 

 literally hhie rock, was evidently derived fi'om this pile of 

 blue granite. And the rock, the chief's house, the walled 

 village, the pass, the winding stream, the green, undulating 

 plain, the roads enlivened by the passing travellers, the 

 massive, and often naked granite mountains in the distance, 

 seen under a bright blue sky, combined to present a picture 

 as novel as it was varied and beautiful. I could not help 

 again wishing that my photographic apparatus had been 



z 



