# Popular Science Monthly/Volume 47/June 1895/Journeying in Madagascar

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* JOURNEYING IN MADAGASCAR
By FRANK VINCENT.
Fig. 1.—On the Road in Filanzana.
Fig. 2.—Malagasy Canoes.
Fig. 3.—The Traveler’s Palm.
​cold until midday, then positively roasted until about four in the afternoon, when you again feel cold until your fire warms you at night. You must have a fire, for, although the houses hereabouts are built of mud bricks, they are by no means tight about doors and roofs. While I was in Antananarivo, the weather was cool and delightful morning and evening, perhaps a trifle too warm in the middle of the day only. But the air was always clear and bracing, and there was generally a light breeze blowing.
Many of the hamlets were now surrounded by a deep ditch, a huge fence of cactus, and a very wide low wall. They reminded me at once of pictures of scenes in central Africa. The ditch generally has some sort of drain, for fear of its overflowing during the heavy rains of the wet season. The ground within the inclosure is quite smooth and level, and the houses usually stand in two rows right and left of the low and narrow entrance gate, which is partially closed by a great stone slab or by piles of logs. I stopped for the night in one of these villages, and was shown quarters in a wretched hut half full of pigs. That is to say, I was offered a room adjoining the pigsty, into which the door of the house directly opened, while the people scrambled into the dwelling room by a window about two feet square, to which they mounted by a pile of rough stones. Upstairs there was a dirty kitchen, to which you had access from the pigsty by a flight of dark, narrow, steep steps in which there was a turn at right angles, for otherwise the house was so small the steps would have had to be vertical. Adjoining this kitchen was a room just large enough to contain my camp bed, and this I accepted—fleas and all—for, if I had to be in the same house as the pigs, at least I preferred another étage. All these villages seemed to allot a large portion of their ground floors to a horrible little black and white spotted pig. The infrequency of pigs on the east coast is more than balanced by their frequency in the central districts.
Fig. 4.—Some Styles of Hair-dressing.
​In one corner sat two little bright-eyed boys who were studying from some paper-covered books—their readers and spellers. I observed that they had also a catechism and a small Testament. All were of course in the Malagasy language. They had also a slate which was used for writing their exercises. I took a little stroll afterward among the houses, and was surprised and amused to see how frightened the chickens were at my approach. I had expected this of the few curs about, but hardly of the fowls. The hens exhibited the greatest alarm, and strove to marshal and drive away their chickens. Apparently even a glimpse of civilization, as represented in my humble self, was altogether too much for these creatures, so naturally more distrustful than their owners, who cheerfully look at everything foreign but will adopt nothing.
During the afternoon we passed through the large village of Ankozobe, pleasantly situated on a smooth hill, like the whole country hereabouts entirely devoid of trees. The people burn a small reed for their cooking, and charge the same price for this as for firewood. Just outside the capital a great field is covered with huge bundles of this reed, there kept for sale. Nearly all the houses of Ankozobe were built in the shape of wall tents—i. e., they had mud walls two or three feet high, upon which directly rested the high-peaked grass roofs. The governor came from his house to invite me to rest and partake of some refreshment, but I was obliged to decline his hospitality, wishing to reach a certain town before dark. This was called Ambatvarana, with deep, wide moat and a square full of cattle. Pigs swarmed everywhere. Just to the westward was a magnificent great mass of gneiss, with precipitous sides showing vertical striæ which looked like the basaltic columns of the Giant's Causeway of Ireland. The range ends a little to the northward of the village in a vast dome of gneiss, with a big conical top which itself rises all of a thousand feet above the roughly undulating plain. It is called Mount Angavo. The highest point is said to be 4,880 feet above sea level, or about one hundred feet above the site of Antananarivo. I visited several houses in this village that were tendered me, but each seemed worse than the other. Finally, I accepted a room in one, on condition that the pigs should sleep away from home for that night. After putting up my camp bed and mosquito-netting, I found I could not get in all my very limited baggage and myself at the same time unless I suspended the most of the former from the walls, which accordingly I did, having driven wooden pegs into the interstices of the mud bricks. The upper floor into which the family were crowded was reached by a vertical bamboo ladder. Soon after lying down for the night I heard so much noise in the pigsty that I was afraid my hostess had forgotten her promise. On searching I did not, it is true, discover any pigs, but there were a cat, a litter of pups, and ​a brood of chickens. These, at least at my distance, did not smell, and I supposed would not indulge their respective vernaculars all the night, so I returned, decided to make the best of the situation. But little did I know that by no means had a complete roster of
Fig. 5.—Native Soldiers.
the inmates been taken. I found long before morning that the place swarmed with vermin of all sorts: lice, fleas, mosquitoes, bugs, cockroaches, spiders, and even scorpions. I arose at 2 a. m. and wished to take to the road at once, but had not the heart to waken my tired men before five. Within an hour we were off.