234 
VISITS TO MADAGASCAR. 
CHAP. XI. 
stopped at my house to-day, to offer any assistance he could 
render, as well as to hear and tell the news. He asked a 
number of questions, and, amongst others, whether I could 
make balloons; for he said there was a French resident at 
the capital who could make balloons go up in the air, with 
fire inside, and could make looking-glasses, and cast cannon. 
When I acknowledged my inferiority to the French gentle¬ 
man in all these respects, he added: “ But you can take 
likenesses, for I have seen some, and you have medicine.” 
He had brought me a trifling present, and asked for a little 
medicine for the fever, which I promised to send him. When 
he shook hands with me on leaving, I could not but pity the 
poor fellow, for his hand was burning with fever at the time. 
The natives, from the high and healthy provinces in the 
interior, suffer in the low regions of the country quite as 
much as Europeans do from the fever, of which they enter¬ 
tain great dread. 
The next morning we resumed our journey. The road 
out of the village was quite as bad as that by which we had 
entered. In descending the hill my bearers sank nearly 
knee deep in mud, and, on reaching the bottom, they had to 
cross a wide piece of water reaching up to their waists, and 
then make their way along the edges of a series of soft- 
flooded rice grounds. This was the only road from the vil¬ 
lage. We next crossed a succession of low, clayey hills, and 
their intervening valleys, where the watercourse at the 
bottom was often widened out to join a rice plantation. 
Yoitsara, the first village we passed, was almost surrounded 
by plantations, fenced with stakes of a fine species of eryth- 
rina, many of which seemed to have taken root in the 
prolific soil, and thus sent forth large branches, bearing 
numerous clusters of rich, scarlet flowers. 
At the next village, Maroombe, considerable portions of 
ground were enclosed, and planted. Under cultivation it 
