228 
VISITS TO MADAGASCAR. 
CHAP. IX. 
purpose of public religious worship and instruction, had been 
erected by the people, who were again gathering to the 
settlement after the dispersion and devastation of the war. 
The people were living in temporary huts. Several of them 
had hung their crops of maize on the branches of trees, or on 
frames of wood, adjacent to their dwellings. We walked 
through their grounds, crossed the Kat river, and proceeded 
some distance, through enclosures of maize and Caffre corn, 
up to a high mountain in the neighbourhood called Beacon 
Hill. The day was clear, and, on reaching the summit, we 
enjoyed an extensive view of the country around, comprising 
mountain, wood, valley, plain, and winding stream, altogether 
a beautiful and fertile country. This was formerly the 
residence of Graika, more recently of Macomo his son. A 
portion of it was occupied by a number of Fingoes; but, still 
more recently, a great part of it has been given away in farms 
of 1500 acres or more to colonial farmers. 
I found, during the walk, many new bulbs; and saw, on 
the banks of the Kat river, some gigantic euphorbias, ap¬ 
parently Euphorbia grandidens , so numerous as to constitute 
the chief objects along the steep and woody borders of the 
stream. Some of them were thirty or forty feet high, and 
two feet thick at the base. Near a place called Gfaika’s Kraal, 
I could not refrain from remaining behind to sketch one or two 
of these singular trees, as well as to dig up bulbs, and gather 
seeds of a beautiful passion-flower and species of creeper 
bearing a bright orange flower, apparently Cephalandra quin - 
queloba. In several places the bright scarlet flowers of the 
Tecoma capensis added greatly to the richness of the woody 
scenery of the neighbourhood. 
As a drawback to the pleasure derived from these beautiful 
objects, we passed on the same route the body of a large dead 
puff-adder, a venomous snake very numerous here. Mr. Van 
Koyer requested us to keep on the windward side of it, as it 
was supposed that the effluvium from it was injurious. He 
