Travelling in Madagascar fifty years ago, and indeed for many years after that date, differed considerably from what we have any experience of in Europe. It was not until the year 1901 that a railway was commenced from the east coast to the interior, and it is only a few months ago that direct communication by rail has been completed between Tamatave and Antanànarìvo. But until the French occupation, in 1895, a road, in our sense of the word, did not exist in the island; and all kinds of merchandise brought from the coast to the interior, or taken between other places, were carried for great distances on men’s shoulders. There were but three modes of conveyance—viz. one’s own legs, the _làkana_ or canoe, and the _filanjàna_ or palanquin. We intended to make use of all these means of getting over the ground (and water); but by far the greater part of the journey of two hundred and twenty miles would be performed in the _filanjàna_, carried on the sinewy shoulders of our bearers or _màromìta_. This was _the_ conveyance of the country (and it is still used a good deal); for during the first thirty years and more of my residence in Madagascar there was not a single wheeled vehicle of any kind to be seen in the interior, nor did even a wheelbarrow come under my observation during that time. This want of our European means of conveyance arose from the fact that no wheeled vehicles could have been used owing to the condition of the tracks then leading from one part of the country to another. The lightest carriage or the strongest waggon would have been equally impracticable in parts of the forest where the path was almost lost in the dense undergrowth, and where the trees barely left room for a palanquin to pass. Nor could any team take a vehicle up and down some of the tremendous gorges, by tracks which sometimes wind like a corkscrew amidst rocks and twisted roots of trees, sometimes climb broad surfaces of slippery basalt, where a false step would send bearers and palanquin together into steep ravines far below, and again are lost in sloughs of adhesive clay, in which the bearers at times sink to the waist, and when the traveller has to leap from the back of one man to another to reach firm standing-ground. Shaky bridges of primitive construction, often consisting of but a single tree trunk, were frequently the only means of crossing the streams; while more often they had to be forded, one of the men going cautiously in advance to test the depth of the water. It occasionally happened that this pioneer suddenly disappeared, affording us and his companions a good deal of merriment at his expense. At times I have had to cross rivers when the water came up to the necks of the bearers, the shorter men having to jump up to get breath, while they had to hold the palanquin high up at arm’s-length to keep me out of the water. [Sidenote: GENERAL FOREST AND GENERAL FEVER]