CIIAP. XI. 
THE VILLAGE OF ANDEVORANDRO. 
287 
merited them. The number of birds was also always propor¬ 
tioned to that of the cattle; if the latter were but few, they 
would be attended by only two or three birds; but if the herd 
was large, there would be great numbers of birds in small 
companies amongst them. I regretted that I did not obtain 
a specimen of these useful birds. 
This afternoon we passed a piece of water called Bano- 
mainty or Black-water, and shortly after reached Andevo- 
randro, a village of perhaps two hundred houses, standing on 
the banks of the Iharoka, the largest river in the district of 
Betanimena. My palanquin was set down at the house of 
the head man of the village; and on reaching the doorway I 
beheld between twenty and thirty men seated on the ground, 
one or two of their number pouring out arrack from long thick 
bamboo canes into large basins, which the rest were drinking 
from, and handing round. Many were shouting or singing a 
kind of monotonous song, others were adding to the din by 
beating time with a stick upon a long hollow bamboo, an 
amusement in which the natives sometimes spend a great 
part of the night. When the chief man came and requested 
this party to remove, they went to a kind of outhouse in the 
neighbourhood, but the arrival of so many travellers drew 
away some from their drunken carousal. 
When I had seen the packages all deposited in the 
government house, I walked through this and two adjoining 
villages to the junction of the river with the sea. The open¬ 
ing was narrow, and the mouth of the river, like most of the 
openings we had passed, was nearly blocked up with sand. 
This neighbourhood appeared more populous than any I had 
before seen. The people seemed industrious and well off 
There were several small gardens near the village; and I 
noticed a number of women sitting outside their houses, and 
employed in peeling the leaflets of the rofia palm, and 
splitting the tough thin skin into threads for weaving; others 
