The children of Madagascar / by Herbert F. Standing.

  • Herbert Standing
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The children of Madagascar / by Herbert F. Standing. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    dank valley; then up again and along the edge of a precipitous slope where at times our bearers can hardly find room to walk abreast, and where one stumble might send us rolling hundreds of feet below. Here fern-like palms and feathery bamboos interlace their delicate tracery overhead, and giant creepers hang like great ships' cables from tree to tree, while lovely orchids, ferns, and mosses cling to the rough bark, or hang out their tufts of fronds and leaves from the forks of the branches. Gorgeous butterflies flit leisurely to and fro, as if desirous of attracting our attention, and on the ground beneath our feet, and on almost every branch and twig we examine, myriads of ants are to be seen hurrying hither and thither in a most business-like manner. Sometimes as we pass along, the silence of the forest will be suddenly broken by the wailing cry of a lemur, a curious monkey-like animal with soft thick fur and a long bushy tail If you keep a good look-out, especially in the early morning, you may often see these pretty creatures bounding and swinging from tree to tree, the mother lemur carrying her young one on her back, just in the fashion that the Malagasy mothers carry their little babies. , It takes from two to three days to cross the great forest; and two more days' travelling across the wide plain of Ankay and through another smaller belt of forest brings us to the village of Ankeramadmika, which lies at the edge of the highland district of Imerina. New the country gradually changes in appearance ; the green forest land gives place to bare rolling prairies of coarse brown grass, which gets drier and drier and more and more scanty as we approach Antananarivo. Now too we shall see no more houses of wattled bamboo, but nearly all are of mud or sun-dried bricks. All this red earth is very tiring to the eye ; the houses are red, the high walls round the enclosures are red, the roads are red, and the bare hills are red ! Where, however, the monotony of this ever-present red is relieved by contrast with the vivid green of the young rice-plants in the valleys, or broken by clumps and groves of mango, peach and Indian lilac-trees, or where its