<311AP. VII. 
NATIVE GARDENS. 
171 
shoulders of the bearers, I passed through the village. 
Two additional bearers were provided for the chair, two others 
carried my camera and photographic apparatus, another the 
camera stand and a small stool, and the fourth my carpet¬ 
bag, a tea-kettle, and some crockery. Among the retinue of 
my friend was the bearer of rice, and of meat purchased in 
the market that morning. As soon as we had left the village, 
the men set off at a short kind of trotting pace, in which the 
bearers kept well together, at the rate of four or five miles an 
hour. They continued without stopping for about three 
hours, when we reached Vohidotra, a scattered sort of village 
on the northern side of a tolerably broad piece of water 
having an outlet to the sea. 
The morning had been fine, the sky partially covered with 
clouds which tempered the heat. Altogether the journey 
was unusually pleasant. The verdure of the plain, and the 
foliage of the trees, chiefly the pandanus or vacoua, appeared 
exceedingly agreeable and refreshing after the dry and barren 
sand of Tamatave. At Yohidotra the men halted to rest and 
cook their rice; and while they were thus employed, I sallied 
forth to the adjacent woods to look for plants. In the 
gardens attached to the cottages, where French beans, garlic, 
and pumpkins were growing, I was surprised to see beautiful 
little dwarf plants of the vinca in full blossom ; and the blue 
Ageratum mexicanum , so carefully tended in our flower bor¬ 
ders, covering the ground and the walks between the beds, 
like a common weed. 
After walking for some distance, and passing one or two 
enclosed spots which I was afterwards informed were burial 
places, I entered the wooded parts of the district, and soon 
found such numbers of orchids, growing so luxuriantly, and 
in such picturesque positions, some of them in full blossom 
and exhibiting, too, so many of their peculiarities of form and 
habits of growth, that I hastened back to the halting place. 
