ciiap. xii. ROMANTIC APPEARANCE OE AMBATOMANGA. 337 
ing several feet beyond their junction at the apex of the roof, 
like a couple of branches, or a pair of straight horns. 
In the centre of these houses was that of the chief, which, 
from being the first of the kind I had seen, appeared all the 
more remarkable. It might be about sixty feet long, and 
half as wide. It was two stories high, with door and windows 
in each story, and a steep roof with attic windows in the 
sides and the ends. The side walls were sheltered by two 
verandahs one above the other, and the posts which supported 
the two verandahs were upwards of twenty feet high. This 
remarkable building, with walls of wood framed in diagonal 
panels, roofed with shingles, spacious, more than double the 
height of any of the other houses, and European and attractive 
in its form, was standing upon the highest spot in the village, 
surrounded by a wall, and imparting altogether a peculiar 
character to the whole place. 
To the north of the village, and connected with it by 
a narrow path, and apparently enclosed within the same 
walls, there was an immense pile of naked granite rock, 
extending upwards of two hundred feet high, and as many 
broad. A solitary house, with thick stone walls and thatched 
roof, crowned its summit. A tall bamboo cane, with a piece 
of cloth fluttering in the breeze, and one or two stunted 
shrubs growing on one side near the edge, were the only other 
objects I could see. The name of the village, Ambatomanga, 
literally blue rock , was evidently derived from this pile of 
blue granite. And the rock, the chief’s house, the walled 
village, the pass, the winding stream, the green, undulating 
plain, the roads enlivened by the passing travellers, the 
massive, and often naked granite mountains in the distance, 
seen under a bright blue sky, combined to present a picture 
as novel as it was varied and beautiful. I could not help 
again wishing that my photographic apparatus had been 
z 
