CURIOUS BURIAL CUSTOM. 235 



solid silver rings of various sizes. A constant wailing, 

 drumming, fiddling, and shell-blowing was kept up during 

 the whole of the time. 



But the most curious part of the Betsil^o burial customs 

 is yet to be described : it is a very disgusting one, but is not 

 peculiar to them, being, as will be seen, common to other 

 tribes, with certain variations. "The third day after death 

 the body swells ; it is then taken from the coffin and rolled 

 upon planks until it becomes all of a pulp. On the fourth 

 day another ox is killed, and the skin from that and those 

 killed previously are cut into long strips. The corpse is then 

 held upright against the beam of the house, an incision is 

 made in the heel of each foot, and all the putrid liquid matter 

 is collected in a large earthen pot or pots ; and when nothing 

 scarcely is left but skin and bone, the corpse is strapped to 

 the beam and there left." The curious beliefs of the people 

 as to the worm supposed to come from the corpse will be 

 more appropriately described in the chapter treating of Mala- 

 gasy Superstition and Folk Lore. 



The Sihanaka. — The Sihanaka tribe have also certain 

 burial usages peculiar to themselves. In a tour which I 

 made round their territory in the year 1874, I noticed a 

 somewhat different kind of memorial from any seen among 

 the Hovas. At the entrance of almost every Sihanaka village 

 two or three tall and slender trunks of trees are fixed into 

 the ground, rising to a height of from thirty to fifty feet. 

 To the summit of these lofty poles the fork of a tree is fixed, 

 the points being sharpened so as to resemble an immense 

 pair of horns. These are erected by the children of deceased 

 persons, who fetch them from the forest, choosing wood of 

 a hard and durable kind. Besides these, were frequently 

 clusters of shorter poles bearing the skulls and horns of 

 bullocks, as was formerly the custom in Imerina ; at some 

 villages these were very numerous, one place being called 

 Marosalazana, "Many poles," evidently from there being a 

 group of twenty to thirty such poles at its entrance. In 

 several instances small tin trunks, painted oak colour, were 

 fixed on one point of the fork; and in others, numerous 

 articles, the property of the deceased, such as mats, baskets, 



