BETS/LEO HOUSES. 201 



parts of Madagascar to which they remove on military service 

 or for other reasons; and while in a Hova village the houses 

 are generally built in rows, all looking one way, among the 

 Tanala, Beteimisaraka, and other tribes the houses are arranged 

 on all four sides of a square, with the doors on two or three 

 sides, and often no windows. The houses in the warmer 

 portion of the country usually have the floors raised some 

 little height above the ground, the flooring being made of the 

 bark of the Traveller's tree spread out flat. The walls are of 

 a slight framework, filled in with the mid-rib or stalks of the 

 leaves of the same tree, and the roof is thatched with the 

 leaves themselves. The door on each side of the house is ol 

 the same material, and a short pole being slung from the low 

 eaves the rude door is slid backward and forward, thus, by 

 this primitive contrivance, dispensing with any joinery or 

 iron work. 



The majority of the houses in the Betsileb province are 

 much smaller than those of the Hovas ; in a village where the 

 writer once stayed the largest house was considerably less . 

 than his tent (eleven feet square), the majority being much 

 smaller than this, and so low that one cannot well stand up- 

 right close to the side walls, which are sometimes only about 

 three feet high. The houses have two openings, one of which 

 is called a door and the other a window, but as they are 

 both a considerable height above the ground a stranger would 

 call them both windows, and say they had no door at all. 

 In the above-mentioned house the threshold was nearly three 

 feet from the ground, and as the opening was only about two 

 and a half feet square it required considerable agility to enter 

 the building, and rendered dignity out of the question. The 

 window is a very small hole about eighteen inches square, at 

 the north end of the house, nearer the east than the west. 

 "Exactly in front of the door is the cooking-place, behind 

 which is the stand, often richly carved, for the large water- 

 pitchers in the south-east corner. Over the fire-place is the 

 invariable frame for drying the rice and wood for fuel, over 

 which again are the joists supporting the plaited bamboo 

 flooring of the store-room and sometimes sleeping-room. The 

 bedstead, at times quite an elaborate affair, is between the 



