Travelling in Madagascar, at least by the main lines of road, is fast losing its former characteristics. Along the easy gradients, the bridged streams, and the embankment-crossed swamps traversed now by good highroads, one is apt to forget how our bearers used to climb up steep and rugged ascents, ford rivers, sometimes up to their necks in rushing waters, and flounder through morasses. In fact, the bearers are becoming somewhat demoralised by these easy and smooth roads, and we now need to take a ride “across country” to realise what our early experiences here were.[26] Mr Street and I, however, managed to get a number of men, about fifty in all, to start with us; and as we were not at all sure of finding native huts to stay in all through our route, we took a tent with us, as well as provisions and clothes, and books to give away to the people who could read them. Towards the end of May we left the capital for our southern journey. One more word of preface to this chapter. Like the tour around the Antsihànaka province, already described, this journey was, first of all, a missionary one; and although I shall not trouble my readers with details of this kind, it must be understood that my companions and I took every opportunity we had of speaking, not only to congregations, but also to any small gathering of people we came across, of the great and glad truths of the Gospel, of which we were the messengers. I shall not describe here the route between Antanànarìvo and Fianàrantsòa: the elevated tract of bare table-land, more than six thousand feet above the sea; the cultivated valleys of the three or four chief rivers; the green pleasant basins of Ambòsitra and Ambòhinàmboàrina; the enormous rocks of Angàvo, and the belt of grey-lichened forest above Nàndihìzana. There were, however, three points which struck me in the Bétsiléo province as being very different from what we see in Imèrina. First, was the much bolder and grander scenery; the mountains are higher in the south, and the gneiss and granite rocks rise up in stupendous masses of stone, such as we do not often see in the northern province.