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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    these roads), and as we go along I will tell you about some of the sights we see and the people we meet. One thing which you are pretty sure to notice as you pass along is the almost total absence of shops, for with the exception of a very few kept by Europeans and Creoles in certain parts of the town, shops such as we understand by that word are almost unknown. Their place is supplied, however, by these curious little stalls which you may see perched about in various places by the road side, or arranged in long rows and irregular groups in the markets and chief places of resort. These stalls are nothing more than a rough framework of bamboo or light wood, roughly thatched with reeds or covered with rofia-cloth as a protection from the sun and rain ; very many of them are even less pretentious than this, consisting merely of an immense rofia-cloth umbrella stuck into the ground. They are generally too small to stand up in, and the occupant, in his broad-brimmed straw hat and white lamba, patiently squats on the floor all day long with his little stock of wares spread out around him—meat cut up into little pieces on a dirty board, little squares of black strong-smelling native soap, baskets of shrimps, dried locusts, salt, earthnuts, fruits of various kinds, &c. Playing around these little stalls you may generally see a group of dirty slave children, the smaller ones toddling about quite naked, and the older ones with nothing but a small strip of dirty cotton cloth about their loins. Often while the stall-keeper is busy haggling with some customer over a tiny piece of cut-money, one of these little slave lads will steal up quietly to the side of the stall, and when he thinks he is unobserved will snatch away one of the little scraps of meat from the man's board. Sometimes, if he and his companions can succeed in getting several pieces in this way, they will take them off to another stall and exchange them for a piece of sugar-cane or some fruit, and will then have the impudence to come back and stand munching what they have thus obtained before the eyes of the man whom they have robbed. As you pass along the streets of Antananarivo, you will be sure to