36 
MADAGASCAR 
belt reaches a breadth of 25 to 45 miles, and behind the 
bay of Antongil even of 60 miles. 
When the traveller, after allowing his youthful 
imagination to dwell in anticipation on the magnificent 
scenery of the tropics, first comes to compare the reality 
with his original idea of the enchantment and the majesty 
of the forest in East Madagascar, he will experience the 
pleasant surprise of finding that Nature, in her luxuriant 
magnificence, has surpassed the most daring flights of 
his fancy. Here is forest in its highest manifestation, an 
original product of Nature, in which no man has had a 
hand, a child of the tropics, which regulates for itself its 
own growth and decay. Though this first impression is 
a mighty one, yet it must be confessed that it does not 
raise that pleasurable feeling of freedom that is awaken¬ 
ed by our woods at home. There rests always on the 
primeval forest something solemn and heavy; we stand 
beside a chaos that is rather bewildering than restful. 
In the struggle for space, light, and air, everything pres¬ 
ses upwards; the giant trunks are not crowned with 
leaves till they reach a height of 60 to 90 ft. above 
the ground, and there they display a confused mass of 
leaves and branches which lets no ray of sunshine enter, 
so that a mysterious twilight prevails in the forest. The 
underwood is scanty, so that it is possible to pass with 
tolerable facility between the gigantic columns, twined 
round with their numberless lianas. The only impedi¬ 
ments are the fallen trunks of the trees which have not 
been able to hold their ground under the burden of age, 
or which have fallen victims to the devastating cyclones. 
But these corpses of the forest are cleared away by 
Nature in an incredibly short time. Millions of voracious 
ants and termites change the timber into fine dust, which, 
with the decaying masses of leaves, forms a fertile mould. 
Wherever in some small clearing a dead trunk has 
remained standing, the termites or white ants climb up 
