BESIDES flowers growing on the ground, there are many shrubs and small trees now in blossom, although some are by no means confined in floral display to the warm and rainy season. Along the hedges in some localities is a small bush, with clusters of purple leguminous flowers, called famàmo (Mundulea suberosa); branches of these shrubs are sometimes placed in a pool or stream, so as to stupefy, and thus easily obtain, any fish present in the water. Very conspicuous are the bright yellow flowers of the tainakòho (Cassia lævigata), and the tsiàfakòmby (Cæsalpinia sepiaria), and the orange-yellow spikes of the sèva (Buddleia madagascariensis). More showy and handsome still perhaps are the abundant large yellow flowers of the prickly pear, which is so largely used for hedges and for the defences of the old towns and villages. The strong and sharp spines, from an inch to an inch and a half long, are the usual native substitute for pins. A species of Hibiscus (Hibiscus diversifolius) is not uncommon, with yellow flowers, which have deep red in the centre; yellow seems indeed the most common colour in the flora of Imèrina. At this time of the year also three or four species of aloe come into flower. The larger of these, called vàhona (Aloe macroclada) by the Malagasy, is much used for planting as a hedge, from its fleshy leaves being armed with sharp prickles; its tall flower spike shoots up very rapidly to a height of four or six feet. Another and smaller one, called sahòndra (Aloe capitata), has its flowers branching at the top of the stalk something like a candelabra. The numerous flowers attract, as they expand, swarms of bees. Another plant, like an aloe in appearance, called tarètra (Fourcroya gigantea) by the natives, has long leaves, with a sharp spine at the ends only; and its flower-stalk shoots up like a small mast to a height of twenty feet, with widely spreading branchlets and an immense number of light coloured flowers. Strong fibre used as thread is obtained from the leaves, the name of the plant being indeed that used for “thread.” The tall flower-stalks of these aloes and agaves form quite a noticeable feature in the Imèrina landscape in the early summer. In the orchards, soon after the mango has finished flowering, we may see the curious whitish flowers of the rose-apple, a sort of ball of long stamens, showing conspicuously among the foliage.

It is well known by those who live in Madagascar that there are, at certain seasons of the year, a number of insects found on trees which produce a constant dropping of water. Happening one day to be standing under a peach-tree in our garden from which water was dropping, I found that there were clusters of insects on some of the smaller branches. In each cluster there were about twenty to thirty insects, and these were partly covered with froth, from which the water came. The insects producing this appeared at first sight to be small beetles, about half-an-inch long, black in colour, with golden-yellow markings on the head and thorax, while on the wing-cases there was a chequer of minute spots of yellow on the black ground. After observing a single insect for a few seconds, I noticed that the tail was quite flexible and moved sideways, and was constantly protruded and then withdrawn a little, and it was evident that these little creatures were the larval form of a species of beetle. The sap of the tree is extracted in such quantities as to maintain their bodies in a state of saturated humidity. The activity of the larvæ seems to increase as the heat of the day progresses, and to diminish again towards evening. But the object of this abstraction of fluid from the tree, and the purpose it serves, is still a subject needing investigation. I have observed these insects on other trees—mangoes, acacia, zàhana, and others; they appear indeed to be very common, and the ground underneath the branches where they cluster is covered with small patches soaked with water. A French naturalist, M. Goudot, described an insect apparently of the same kind as that found in Imèrina as the larva of a species of Cercopis, and nearly related to the cicada of Europe. The quantity of water produced from a tree at Tamatave seems to have been much greater than that observed in the interior, and resembling a small rain-shower; probably this was due to the greater heat of the coast. M. Goudot says that the perfect insect attains a length of an inch and a half, and that these also emit small drops of clear and limpid water.

Towards the beginning of December the earlier crop of rice comes into ear; and should the rains fall as usual during November, the remaining portions of the great rice-plain will be all planted out with the later crop, the whole of the level and its branching valleys presenting an unbroken expanse of green. Of this, the early rice shows distinctly as a darker shade of colour, although it will soon begin to turn yellow, as the grain ripens under the steady heat and the plentiful rainfall. Perhaps this is the time when Bétsimitàtatra is seen in its most attractive and beautiful aspect, for every part of it is covered with rice in some stage or other of growth and cultivation.

To anyone coming for the first time into a tropical country from England, the comparative uniformity in the length of the days and nights throughout the year seems very strange. In Imèrina there is only about two hours’ difference in the length of the longest day, about Christmas, and the shortest day, early in July. It is dark at about seven o’clock on the first of January, and at about six o’clock on the first of July. Thus we have no long evenings, which are such a delight in the summer months in England; but, on the other hand, we escape the long nights and the short gloomy days of the English winter. We lose also the long twilights of the temperate zone, although I have never seen the almost instantaneous darkness following sunset which one sometimes reads about. There is a twilight of from fifteen to twenty minutes’ duration in this part of Madagascar. While, therefore, we miss the much greater variety of the seasons in England, we have many compensations, especially in the very much larger proportion of bright sunny days, the clear skies, and the pure atmosphere of our Imèrina climate. Very seldom have we a wet morning in any part of the year; and the heat is not more oppressive than it is in hot summers in England, while in the cold season the sharp keen air is bracing and health-giving. We never see snow in Madagascar, but a thin film of ice is very occasionally seen on the slopes of the Ankàratra mountains in July and August.

It may be interesting to notice at this point the numerous words used by the Malagasy to indicate the different times of the day, from morning to evening. Clocks and watches are comparatively a recent introduction into Madagascar, nor do the people ever seem to have contrived any kind of sun-dial, although, as will be seen, they did use something else as a kind of substitute for such a time-keeper. It should be remembered that the hours given (counting in European fashion) as equivalents for these native divisions of the night and the day are only approximations, and must be taken as the mean of the year, or, in other words, at about the time of equal day and night, towards the end of March or of September. They are as follows:—

This list is, I think, a very interesting one, and shows the primitive pastoral and agricultural habits of the Hova Malagasy before they were influenced by European civilisation. Previous to their knowledge of clocks and watches (which are still unknown to the majority of people away from the capital), the native houses thus served as a rude kind of dial. As, until recent times, these were always built with their length running north and south, and with the single door and window facing the west, the sunlight coming in after midday at the open door gave, by its gradual progress along the floor, a fairly accurate measure of time to people amongst whom time was not of very much account. In the forenoon, the position of the sun, nearly square with the eastern purlin of the roof, marked about nine o’clock; and as noon approached, its vertical position, about the ridge-pole, or at least its reaching the meridian, clearly showed twelve o’clock. Then, as the sunlight gradually passed westward and began to peer in at the door, at about one o’clock, it announced “the peeping-in of the day” (mitsìdika àndro); and then, as successive points on the floor were reached by the advancing rays, several of the hours of the afternoon were sufficiently clearly marked off: “the place of rice-pounding” (am-pitotòam-bàry), as the light fell on the rice mortar, further into the house; “the calf-fastening place” (am-pamatòran-jànak òmby), as the rays reached one of the three central posts supporting the ridge, and where the calf was fastened for the night; and then, “touching” (tàfapàka), when the declining sunshine reached the eastern wall, at about half-past four in the afternoon. Other words and notes of time, it will be seen, are derived from various natural phenomena. Some other words for the division of time used by the Malagasy may be here noted. Thus “a rice-cooking” (indray màhamàsa-bàry) is frequently used to denote about half-an-hour; while “the frying of a locust” (indray mitòna valàla) is a phrase employed to describe a moment.

Many words exist in the Malagasy language to denote different appearances of nature which are somewhat poetical and seem to show some imaginative power. Thus the light fleecy clouds in the upper regions of the atmosphere are called “sky gossamer” (faròran-dànitra); the sun is the “day’s-eye” (masoandro); the galaxy is the “dividing of the year” (èfi-taona); the rainbow is “God’s great knife” (àntsibèn’ Andrìamànitra); and a waterspout is the “tail of the sky” (ràmbon-dànitra).

We saw just now that in Imèrina the native houses, with the sun touching different parts of them, form a kind of primitive sun-dial; so it may be well here to say something about the structure and arrangement of a native house in this part of Madagascar.

A Hova house of the old style is always built with its length running north and south; it is an oblong, the length being about half as much again as the breadth, and the door and window always on the west side, so as to be sheltered from the prevailing south-east winds; for, as there is no glass, there would be much inconvenience in facing the windward side. There is frequently another window at the north end of the house, and often one also in the north gable. The material used always to be the hard red clay found all over the central provinces; and this is still largely used, although sun-dried bricks are supplanting the old style of building. This clay, after being mixed with water, is kneaded by being trampled over thoroughly, and is then laid in courses of about a foot to eighteen inches in height, and about the same in thickness. Each layer is allowed to become hard and firm before the next one is set, and it is well beaten on both sides as it dries. If properly laid and of good material, the cracks are not very large when the clay is dry, and are filled up; and it makes a very substantial and durable walling, quite as much, and more so, as the majority of cheap brick houses in England. The boundary walls of the compounds are also made of the same hard clay; and it is remarkable how many years such material will last without much damage, although exposed almost daily, for four or five months every year, to the heavy rains of the wet season. (I know walls which had been built for several years before I saw them first forty-three years ago, and yet they seem little altered since that time.)

The houses of the upper classes and richer people used to be built of timber framework, the walls being of thick upright planks, which are grooved at the edge, a tenon of the tough anìvona palm bark being inserted so as to hold them together. Two or three lengths of the same fibrous substance were also passed through each plank longitudinally at different heights from the ground, so as to bind them all firmly together round the house. The accompanying drawing will show more clearly than any verbal description the details of the structure of a Hova tràno-kòtona, as this style of wooden house is called (no such houses are built nowadays; and very few of them remain; the use of brick, sun-dried and burnt, has entirely superseded them). The roof in both clay and timber houses does not depend for its stability on the walls only, but is mainly supported by three tall posts, which are let into the ground for some depth and carry the ridge-piece. One of these posts is in the centre, and one is at each end, close to the walls inside the house. This is a wise provision, as the roofs are generally of high pitch, and in violent winds would need much more support than could be given by the walls. The gables were always thatched with the same materials as the roof, either of long grass or the hèrana sedge. At each gable the outer timbers cross the apex, and project upwards for about a foot or two, the extremities being notched, and often having a small wooden figure of a bird. In the houses of people of rank, the tàndro-tràno or “house-horns” were three or four feet long, while in some of the royal houses they projected ten or twelve feet, the length being apparently some indication of the rank of the owner. In some tribes these gable ornaments, which have become only conventional horns among the Hovas, are carved in exact resemblance of those adorning the head of a bullock.

The interior arrangements of a Hova house are very simple and are (or perhaps it would be more correct to say were) almost always the same.

Let us, following Malagasy politeness, call out before we enter, “Haody, haody?” equivalent to, “May we come in?” And while we wait a minute or two, during which the mistress of the house is reaching down a clean mat for us to sit down on, we notice that the threshold is raised a foot or more above the ground on either side, sometimes more, so that a stone is placed as a step inside and out. Entering the house in response to the hospitable welcome, “Màndrosòa, Tòmpoko é,” “Walk forward, sir” (or madam), we step over the raised threshold. In some parts of Imèrina a kind of closet, looking more like a large oven than anything else, is made of clay at the south-east corner, opposite the door, and here, as in an Irish cabin, the pig finds a place at night, and above it the fowls roost. Near the door the large wooden mortar or laona for pounding rice generally stands, and near it are the fanòto or pestle, a long round piece of wood, and the sahàfa or large shallow wooden dish in which the rice is winnowed from husk removed by pounding. At about the middle of the eastern side of the house are placed two or three globular sìny or water-pots, the mouths covered with a small basket to keep out the dust. Farther on, but near the west side, is the fàtana or hearth, a small enclosure about three feet square. In this are fixed five stones, on which the rice-cooking pots are arranged over the fire. And over this is sometimes fixed a light framework upon which the cooking-pots are placed when not in use. There is no chimney, the smoke finding its way out through windows or door or slowly through the rush or grass thatch, and so the house is generally black and sooty above, long strings of cobweb and soot hanging down from the roof. Such appendages were considered as marks of long residence and honour, and so the phrase, mainty molàly, lit. “black from soot,” is a very honourable appellation, and is applied to things ancient, such as the first Christian hymns; and missionaries who have been a long time resident in the island are given this name as a mark of respect.

The north-east corner of the house is the sacred portion of it, and is called zòro firaràzana—i.e. the corner where the ràry or war-chant was sung and where any religious act connected with the former idolatry was performed, and in which the sàmpy or household charm was kept in a basket suspended from the wall. In this corner also is the fixed bedstead, which, especially in royal houses, was often raised up some height above the ground and reached by a notched post serving as a ladder, and sometimes screened with mats or coarse cloth. West of this, close to the north roof-post, is the place of honour, avàra-pàtana, “north of the hearth,” where guests are invited to sit down, a clean mat being spread as a seat, just as a chair is handed in European houses.

There is little furniture in a purely native house; a few rolls of mats, half-a-dozen spoons in a small but long basket fixed to the wall, some large round baskets with covers, and perhaps a tin box containing làmbas for Sunday and special occasions; a few common dishes of native pottery, and perhaps two or three of European make; a horn or a tin zìnga, for drinking water; a spade or two—these with the rice mortar and pounder and winnower already mentioned—the water-pots, and the implements for spinning and weaving, constitute about the whole household goods in the dwellings of the poorer classes. The earthen floor is covered with coarse mats, and sometimes the walls are lined with finer mats; in the roof an attic is often formed for a part of or the whole length of the house and is reached by a rude ladder. The floor of this upper chamber is frequently covered over with a layer of earth and is used as a cooking-place, with much advantage to the lower part of the house, which is thus kept comparatively free from smoke and soot.

It must be understood the foregoing description applies to the original style of native house, as unaffected by modern innovations. In the capital and the more important places, as well as in many villages, numbers of brick houses, with upper storeys and three or four or more rooms, have been built of late years; and hundreds of six-roomed houses, with verandahs carried on brick pillars, have also been erected, following a model introduced about the year 1870 by the late Rev. J. Pearse. This struck the fancy of the well-to-do people, and similar ones have been built all over the central provinces.

Few people who have lived in Madagascar can have failed to notice a small longish lump of light coloured clay stuck under the eaves of the house, or on the side of a window, or, in fact, in any sheltered place; and if we take the trouble to break off a piece, we find that this lump of clay contains a number of cells, all filled with caterpillars or spiders in a numbed and semi-lifeless condition. The maker of these cells is a black wasp about an inch long, with russet wings, and as one sits in the verandah of one’s house one may often hear a shrill buzz somewhere up in the rafters, and there the little worker is busy bringing in pellets of clay with which she builds up the walls of the cell. (When I lived at Ambòhimànga, one of these wasps made a nest with several cells in my study, as the window was generally open to the air.) Presently she is off again for another load to the banks of a little stream where she has her brick-field. Kneading the red earth with her mandibles, she quickly forms it into a pellet of clay, about the size of a pea, which she dexterously picks up and flies away back to the verandah. This pellet is placed on the layer already laid, carefully smoothed and “bonded in” with the previous structure, until a cell is completed. Observations made by a careful student of animal and insect life show that about twenty-six journeys finish one cell, and that on a fine day it takes about forty-five minutes to complete it. This is only one out of many cells, however, placed on the top of each other.

With regard to the storing of these cells with food for the grubs of the wasp, Mr Cory[8] found that the number of spiders enclosed in eleven cells varied from eight to nineteen. These are caught by the wasp, stung so as to be insensible, but not killed, and then the egg is laid in their bodies, so that on being hatched the grub finds itself in the midst of food.

Another species of these solitary wasps is a much larger insect, about two inches in length, and she makes nests, which are extremely hard, and are like half-buried native water-pots, with the mouths facing the observer, and arranged regularly one above the other. When finished they are plastered over with rough gravel. Unlike the wasp previously mentioned, this one does not fetch the clay for building purposes from the banks of a stream, but carries the water to the dry earth, which it then damps and kneads into balls. The cells are stocked with caterpillars, which are stung and numbed in the same way as the spiders are treated by the first-named wasp. There are usually three caterpillars placed in each cell.

Another wasp, also very common, does not build cells, but digs a burrow in the ground, even in pretty hard places, like a well-trodden road. Some of these use caterpillars for stocking their burrows, some large spiders, and some crickets, but all drag or carry their prey on foot, even the largest of them. One small wasp, when carrying a spider, first amputates all its legs and then slings the body beneath her. The burrows of the larger wasp are deep in comparison with the size of the insect, being frequently a foot or more in depth. Mr Cory gives a graphic description of a battle between one of these wasps and a large spider, in which, however, the former managed to sting its prey and capture it.

There is one very small wasp that makes no cell or burrow, but chooses a long hole in a piece of wood, or a small bamboo, etc., for the rearing of its larvæ. “Each kind of wasp seems to have its own peculiar way of hunting; some run down on foot by scent for long distances; some dash down violently into the web of a spider, and catch him as he drops from out of it; while others again seize their prey upon the wing, especially the social wasps. The males of all are lazy and do no work.”[9]

January is usually the wettest month of the year in Imèrina; and in some years there occurs what the Hova call the hafitòana, or “seven days”—that is, of almost continuous rain, although it more usually lasts only three or four days. Such a time is most disastrous for houses, compounds and boundary walls, for the continuous rain soaks into them and brings them down in every direction. From the steep situation of the capital, almost every house compound is built up on one side with a retaining wall, and on the other is cut away so as to form a level space.

The prolonged moisture, combined with the heat of this time of the year, naturally makes everything grow luxuriantly. The hillsides again become green and pleasant to the eye; our gardens are gay with flowers, and in many places the open downs display a considerable amount of floral beauty. I have never seen elsewhere such a profusion of wild flowers as that which met our view when travelling from the south-west to Antanànarìvo in December 1887. Leaving Antsìrabé and proceeding northwards, the level country was gay with flowers, which literally covered the downs, and in many places gave a distinct and bright colour to the surface of the ground. Among these the most prominent was a pale pink flower on stems from a foot to eighteen inches high, called by the people kòtosày (Sopubia triphylla), and also the lovely deep blue flower called nìfinakànga, which latter covered the paths and also occurred very abundantly among the grass. In many places, especially near villages, whether deserted or still inhabited, a plant with small pale blue flowers (various species of Cynoglossum), almost exactly like our English “forget-me-not,” grew in dense masses, showing a blue-tinted surface even at a considerable distance. The vonènina, with a pale pink flower, was very frequent, as well as several species of bright yellow flowers, one with a head of minute florets, looking like a small yellow brush; others were star-shaped, the whole forming in many places a brilliant mass of gold. Three or four species of white-flowered plants, one of them a clematis (Clematis bojeri), were very frequent; and a few late examples of terrestrial orchids were seen. Five or six weeks previously these were among the most abundant flowers met with, and their clusters of waxy-white flowers were very conspicuous. Other species of orchid, of rich crimson and also of purple, were even more beautiful.

We reckoned that there were from twenty to thirty different species of wild flowers then in bloom on these downs of Vàkinankàratra, gladdening our eyes by their varied beauty and abundance on that glorious morning. The flowers, however, grew much scarcer as we travelled over higher ground; but six weeks previously these upper tanèty had also been gay with great masses of the brilliant crimson flowers of a leguminous plant, which grew in clusters of many scores of spikes growing close together. Our ride that day obliged us to modify the opinions previously held as to the poverty of Madagascar in wild flowers.