But we shall not, in these pages, have much to do with these modern innovations, for a railway in Madagascar is very much like a railway in Europe. Our journeys will mostly be taken by the old-fashioned native conveyance, the _filanjàna_ or light palanquin, carried by four stout and trusty native bearers. We shall thus not be whirled through the most interesting portion of our route, catching only a momentary glimpse of many a beautiful scene. We can get down and walk, whenever we like, to observe bird or beast or insect, to gather flower or fern or lichen or moss, or to take a rock specimen, things utterly impracticable either by railway or motor car, and not very easy to do in any wheeled conveyance. Our object will be, not to get through the journey as fast as possible, but to observe all that is worth notice during the journey. We shall therefore, in this style of travel, not stay in modern hotels, but in native houses, notwithstanding their drawbacks and discomforts; and thus we shall see the Malagasy as they are, and as their ancestors have been for generations gone by, almost untouched by European influence, and so be able to observe their manners and customs, and learn something of their ideas, their superstitions, their folk-lore, and the many other ways in which they differ from ourselves. [Sidenote: EXTENT OF THE ISLAND] Let us, however, first try to get a clear notion about this great island, and to realise how large a country it is. Take a fair-sized map of Madagascar, and we see that it rises like some huge sea-monster from the waters of the Indian Ocean; or, to use another comparison, how its outline is very like the sole—the left-hand one—of a human foot. As we usually look at the island in connection with a map of Africa, it appears as a mere appendage to the great “Dark Continent”; and it is difficult to believe that it is really a thousand miles long, and more than three hundred miles broad, with an area of two hundred and thirty thousand square miles, thus exceeding that of France, Belgium and Holland all put together.[2] Before the year 1871 all maps of Madagascar, as regards its interior, were pure guesswork. A great backbone of mountains was shown, with branches on either side, like a huge centipede. But it is now clear that, instead of these fancy pictures, there is an extensive elevated region occupying about two-thirds of the island to the east and north, leaving a wide stretch of low country to the west and south; and as the watershed is much nearer the east than the west of the island, almost all the chief rivers flow, not into the Indian Ocean, but into the Mozambique Channel. When we add that a belt of dense forest runs all along the east side of Madagascar, and is continued, with many breaks, along the western side, and that scores of extinct volcanoes are found in several districts of the interior, we shall have said all that is necessary at present as to the physical geography. Many