chap. xt. PHYSICAL PECULIARITIES OF THE PEOPLE. 
301 
projecting. The top of the head was round and full, the 
lower part of the hack of the head flat, and almost forming a 
straight line from the back of the crown to the neck. The 
hair was jet black, crisp, and sometimes curly, usually fastened 
in two or three round balls at the side of the head, and braided 
into a sort of queue behind. When inclined to be woolly, it was 
loosely so. I never saw the hair of any Malagasy so woolly 
as that of some of the African tribes, the most remarkable 
instance of which to me was that of Sechele, the tall noble¬ 
looking chief of Kolobeng, whom I saw at Cape Town, and 
the covering of whose finely formed head hung down, not in 
ringlets, but in cords of the most closely matted fine woolly 
hair. 
In person, the Malagasy appeared to me generally well 
formed, with perhaps some little disproportion in the short¬ 
ness of the neck. The chest, however, was well developed, 
the trunk broad, the limbs muscular, the gait firm, and the 
complexion a rich warm brown. I scarcely saw a deformed 
person in the country. The women were generally covered 
from the neck to the ankles; but the men at work in the 
fields often wore a piece of cloth round their waists. Few, if 
any, ornaments, except a crocodile’s tooth, or beads on a string 
tied round the wrist, were worn by the common people. 
Soon after seven in the morning we resumed our journey, 
our company being now reduced to about seventy persons, 
and the packages also being diminished to twenty-five. Our 
route lay over a richly wooded fertile country, diversified by 
masses of rock, chiefly quartz, sometimes of a beautiful pink 
colour, and occasionally a species of basalt. 
Since we had left the lower country, the rofia had become 
smaller and less frequent, but the traveller’s tree was abund¬ 
ant on the sides of the hills and in the valleys, and in every 
moist part of the country, appearing at this elevation to 
attain its greatest perfection. This tree, Urania speciosa , is 
