Three-quarters of an hour brought us to the lake, a beautiful expanse of water, but only one small canoe was visible, and a stiff breeze from the east had raised waves of a size quite formidable to such cranky craft as Malagasy canoes are. The shore opposite to us seemed from three to four miles distant; to the northward the water extended for several miles, with bays running up among the hills, and a large arm turning eastward in the direction of the valley through which the river draining the lake flows into the sea. Many of the villages on the rising ground across the water were seen quite distinctly (for it had turned out a lovely afternoon) and seemed large places. A considerable portion of the population is indeed massed round this north-east corner of the lake, and we regretted being obliged to leave so many large villages unvisited, but our time would not allow us to go round the head of the Alaotra. The picture was a pleasant one from the shore; the expanse of blue water, with the waves dancing and sparkling in the sunlight; the villages on the green hills across the lake; and behind them grand masses of mountain, with a good deal of dark forest capping them. To the north of the Màningòry valley was distinctly visible an extinct volcanic crater, with a large portion of one of its sides broken down and revealing the immense cup-shaped hollow within. The aneroid showed that the surface of the lake was twenty-six hundred feet above the sea, about nineteen hundred feet below the height of the capital. We waited and waited on the shore, sweeping the opposite banks with our telescopes for signs of approaching canoes, but looked in vain; nothing like a canoe was to be seen, and the waves got higher and higher; evidently it would not have been safe to cross so late in the day, when the sea breeze, as is the case also on the coast lagoons, makes a considerable swell, and crossing is practicable only for the largest canoes. And while we are waiting, we may remark that this Lake Alaotra is the largest one in Madagascar, and is about twenty-five miles long, by four or five in average breadth. But as the level marshy land to the west and south is only a few inches above its surface, the lake is of much greater extent in the wet season. It receives the drainage of the northern portion of the Ankay plain, so that a considerable body of water must issue from its north-eastern arm and flow towards the sea. According to the Rev. L. Dahle, the name “Alaotra” is probably the Arabic _Al-lutat_, “the dashing of the waves,” the sea. The Arabs of the Comoro Islands and East Africa are known among the Malagasy as the “Taloatra”—_i.e._ “those from beyond the ocean.”[18] [Sidenote: IRRITATING DELAY]