The first thing that attracted my attention in travelling south, after four or five days’ journey, was that the upright stones placed near graves were not the rough undressed slabs common in Imèrina, but were finely dressed and squared and ornamented with carving. Coming after that to Ambòsitra, I first met with one of the memorial posts just mentioned. This was a piece of timber, seven or eight inches square and about ten feet high, with pieces of wood projecting from a little below the top, so as to form a kind of stage. Each face of the post was elaborately carved with different patterns arranged in squares. Some of these were concentric circles, a large one in the centre, with smaller ones filling up the angles; others had a circle with a number of little bosses on them; others had a kind of leaf ornament, and in others parallel lines were arranged in different directions. The narrow spaces dividing these squares from each other had in some cases an ornament like the Norman cheiron, and in others, something similar to the Greek wave-like scroll. The whole erection with its ornamentation bore a strong resemblance to the old runic stones, or the manorial crosses of Ireland and the Scottish highlands. A day or two’s journey farther south brought us to a tract of country where there was a profusion of carved memorials scattered along the roadside, and in all directions visible on either hand. And on reaching a rounded green hill west of the road, the old and deserted village of Ikangàra, we saw that there was a large number of tombs and memorial posts close together, so we went to inspect them more minutely. Within a short distance were some forty or fifty tombs, and on further examination there appeared to be at least half-a-dozen different kinds: (1) The largest tombs—there were two of them—were of small flat stones, built in a square of some twenty to twenty-five feet, and about five feet high. But all around them was a railing of posts and rails, all elaborately carved with the patterns just described. (2) Another kind of tomb was formed by a square stone structure, about twelve feet each way and four or five feet high, but on the top was an enclosure of carved posts and lintels about eight feet high, with a single carved post in the centre. (3) A third kind of monument was a massive block of granite about ten feet high, with carved posts at the corners and touching them, and connected by cross-pieces; on these the skulls and horns of the bullocks killed at the funeral of the person commemorated were fixed. (4) Another kind of memorial was a massive square post of wood, about twenty feet high and fifteen inches square, carved on all four sides from top to bottom. There were four or five of these enormous posts here; and in one case there was a pair of them, as if to form a kind of gateway.