Although Tamatave has always been the chief port on the east coast of Madagascar, there were, for many years after my arrival there, no facilities for landing or shipping goods. The bullocks, which formed the staple export, were swum off to the ships, tied by their horns to the sides of large canoes, and then slung on board by tackles from the yard-arm. From the shouting and cries of the native drovers, the struggles of the oxen, and their starting back from the water, it was often a very exciting scene. A number of these bullockers were always passing between the eastern ports of Madagascar and the islands of Mauritius and Réunion, and kept the markets of these places supplied with beef at moderate rates. The vessels generally ceased running for about four months in the early part of the year, when hurricanes are prevalent in the Indian Ocean; and it may easily be supposed that the passenger accommodation on board these ships was not of the first order. However, compared with the discomforts and, often, the danger and long delays endured by some, I had not much to complain of in my first voyage to Madagascar. It had, at least, the negative merit of not lasting long, and I had not then the presence of nearly three hundred oxen as fellow-passengers for about a fortnight, as on my voyage homewards, when I had also a severe attack of malarial fever. The native houses of Tamatave, like those of the other coast villages, were of very slight construction, being formed of a framework of wood and bamboo, filled in with leaves of the pandanus and the traveller’s tree. In a few of these some attempts at neatness were observable, the walls being lined with coarse cloth made of the fibre of _rofìa_-palm leaves, and the floor covered with well-made mats of papyrus. But the general aspect of the native quarter of the town was filthy and repulsive; heaps of putrefying refuse exhaled odours which warned one to get away as soon as possible. In almost every other house a large rum-barrel, ready tapped, showed what an unrestricted trade was doing to demoralise the people. I could not help noticing the strange articles of food exposed for sale in the little market of the Bétsimisàraka quarter. Great heaps of brown locusts seemed anything but inviting, nor were the numbers of minute fresh-water shrimps much more tempting in appearance. With these, however, were plentiful supplies of manioc root, rice of several kinds, potatoes and many other vegetables, the brilliant scarlet pods of different spices, and many varieties of fruit—pine-apples, bananas, melons, peaches, citrons and oranges. Beef was cheap as well as good, and there was a lean kind of mutton, but it was much like goat-flesh. Great quantities of poultry are reared in the interior and are brought down to the coast for sale to the ships trading at the ports. [Sidenote: NATIVE HOUSES]