Here and there throughout the province one comes across a village which was formerly the capital of a petty kingdom, where we find several strong and well-built timber houses. Such a place was Ambòhitritankàdy (I say “was,” because it now no longer exists), one of the villages in my mission district. It was on a high hill, and in the centre of the village were ten large houses of massive timber framing and with very high-pitched roofs, with long “horns” at the gables, and these were arranged five on each side of a long oblong space sunk a couple of feet below the ground. Here, in former times, bull-fights took place, and various games and amusements were carried on. One of the houses, where the chief himself resided, was much larger than the rest, and the corner posts, as well as the great central posts supporting the ridge, were very massive pieces of timber. It was all in one great room, without any partitions, the whole being well floored with wood, and the walls covered with fine mats. Similar houses might be seen at most of the chief towns of Imèrina; but the house I have just described was the largest and finest of any, not excepting those in the capital and at Ambòhimànga. Sad to say, except at these two places, where two ancient timber houses at the first one, and one at the other, are still preserved as a kind of curiosity, almost all these fine structures have been demolished in order to get well-seasoned timber for furniture and buildings. They have been superseded by much less picturesque, but perhaps more comfortable as well as cheaper, houses of sun-dried or burnt brick. There is no privacy or retirement about the houses in the village, no back-yard or outbuildings, although occasionally low walls make a kind of enclosure around some of them. Here and there among the houses are square pits, four or five feet deep, and eight or ten feet square, called fàhitra. These are pens for the oxen, which are kept in them to be fattened, formerly especially for the national festival of the New Year. As may be supposed, these are very dirty places, and in the wet season are often just pools of black mud; indeed the village, as a whole, is anything but neat and clean. All sorts of rubbish and filth accumulate; there are no sanitary arrangements; frequently the cattle used to be penned for the night in a part of the village, and the cow-dung made it very muddy in wet weather, and raised clouds of stifling dust when it was dry. Frequently the cow-dung is collected and made into circular cakes of six or eight inches diameter, which are then stuck on the walls of the houses to dry. This is used as fuel for burning; and splitting off large slabs of gneiss rock, which are employed by the people in making their tombs.