HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
333 
To these markets all the productions of the country, 
animal and vegetable, and the various native manufactures 
and foreign importations, are brought for sale. Here also 
slaves are publicly bought and sold like cattle, and public 
kabarys, or messages from the sovereign, are announced. 
The situations selected for these markets are usually 
ample fields of level ground, at no great distance from 
some principal town, and it is called by the day of the 
week on which the market is held there. Hence the 
familiar expression, “You can buy your timber at Thurs¬ 
day”—that is, at the market held on Thursday. 
No shops, booths, stalls, or sheds are used in the mar¬ 
kets. Every article is spread upon the ground usually 
on mats. No regular order of squares or rows is observed, 
and the purchasers must be content to thread their way 
in all perplexing directions through this labyrinth of com¬ 
modities and sellers. 
The only order is, that persons who have similar articles 
for sale, usually sit near one another. Some of them have 
one or two of the articles they sell, fastened to the top of 
a long pole, which is fixed in the ground near the place 
on which their goods are spread out. This is used as a 
kind of sign on the part of the dealers, and serves to 
guide those who are in search of the articles thus exhibited. 
Cattle are collected in large numbers for sale at the 
extremities of the markets, and the butchers usually take 
their place near them. Then in the body of the market 
will be found the dealers in spears, spade-handles, and 
cutlery; next in order, the sellers of cloth, of lambas, of 
cotton and silk for spinning and weaving; adjoining these, 
perhaps, the sellers of sugar, tobacco, and snuff, then of 
honey, salt, and soap, earthenware, wooden bowls, and 
silver chains, beads, necklaces, silks, and ornaments; then 
