On Monday morning we resumed our journey northward, and towards midday entered the belt of forest which covers that western line of hills of which I have already spoken. We had been approaching it obliquely in a north-north-east direction for the last two days. An ascent of about five hundred feet brought us to the summit, for the road passes along the narrow knife-edge-like ridge of the very highest point, a hill called Ambàravàrambàto (“At the Stone Gateway”), having two heads of almost equal height, with a depression between them. These points, from their peculiar outline, gave us a useful landmark to connect our journey northwards with the ground we had already traversed. Soon after noon we stopped for a few minutes at the top, and had an extensive view all around us. North and south, the line of forest-covered hills dividing Imèrina from the lower plateau of Ankay stretched away on either hand into the far distance. Behind us were the bare hills and downs of Imèrina, before us the Ankay plain, many of the low hills covered, and almost every valley filled, with bright green woods. Beyond this were lines of hills increasing in height until they met the mountains of Béfòrona and Anàlamazàotra, clothed with the broader of the two belts of forest which run down the eastern side of Madagascar. Far to the north in the dim distance we could just see the southern portion of the Antsihànaka plain. A very steep descent, first down an exceedingly rugged kind of stone staircase, and then through dense wood, hardly allowing passage for the palanquin in several places, brought us down to a charming valley between two great spurs of the hills. After about an hour more we came to a little village, where we were glad to get some rest and food after six or seven hours’ hard travelling. The aneroid informed us that we had descended more than one thousand two hundred feet from the summit of the hill, and about seven hundred feet from the upper plateau of Imèrina. We had to pitch the tent in the open plain that night, for a village of which we had heard, and had expected to be a good-sized place, proved to be only a collection of eight or nine miserable huts, scattered about in twos and threes. [Sidenote: ANT-HILLS]