Not very far to the east of the second group of old volcanoes mentioned above is the large village of Antsìrabé (“much salt”), which is about seventy-five miles south-west of Antanànarìvo, and is now on the automobile road to the Bétsiléo province. At this place one of the chief springs is largely charged with lime, which has formed an extensive deposit all over a small level valley sunk some twenty feet below the general level of the plain around the village. For a long time this place furnished almost all the lime used for building in the capital and in the central province of Imèrina. Besides the deposit over the floor of the valley, there was also a compact ridge-shaped mass of lime accretion, seventy feet long by eighteen to twenty feet wide, and about fifteen or sixteen feet high. This had all been deposited by the spring, which kept open a passage through the lime to the top. Some years ago, however, the spring was tapped by a shaft, of no great depth, a few yards to the north, over which a large and commodious bath-house was erected by the Norwegian Lutheran Mission; and here many visitors came to bathe in the hot mineral water, which has been found very beneficial in rheumatic and other complaints.[21] A little distance to the south-west is another spring, not, however, hot, but only milk-warm, the water of which is drunk by those who bathe in the other spring. This water has been shown to be, in chemical constituents, almost identical with the famous Vichy water of France. All over the valley the water oozes up in various places; and about half-a-mile farther north are several other springs, somewhat hotter than that just described, to which the natives largely resort for curative bathing. [Sidenote: EXTINCT HIPPOPOTAMI]