(5) Still another kind was a great block of dressed granite, with iron hooping round the top, in which were fixed a dozen or more pairs of slender _iron_ horns. [Sidenote: ELABORATE CARVING] All the way along the road to Ambòhinàmboàrina we came across different combinations of memorial posts, and of dressed fine white granite in upright blocks, in many cases arranged in couples, so that they were very conspicuous all over the surrounding country. Before leaving the subject of ornamentation among the Bétsiléo, I may notice that the window shutters of their houses, the wooden fixed bedstead—looking more like a cupboard than a sleeping-place—and other portions of the interior, are (or were) elaborately carved with the patterns already mentioned and other designs.[27] In the early part of June we left the Bétsiléo capital for the south, intending if possible to make our way through the forest to the south-east coast, and thence travel to Fort Dauphine, the southernmost Hova military station. The route south from Fianàrantsòa is for many miles through a valley between lofty hills; and there one gradually ascends to a point where the valley ends, and at a place called Ivàtoàvo (“high rock”) one gets a most extensive prospect, of a comparatively level plain stretching away for many miles, and dotted all over with the green ring-shaped _vàla_ or homesteads of the Bétsiléo. This plain is surrounded with the grandest and boldest mountains, many of them rising sheer from the level in many hundred feet of bare gneiss rock, and in the most picturesque outlines. To the north-west one lofty spire of rock has a flat-topped head, much resembling the Pieter Botha mountain in Mauritius. I was afterwards told that it was formerly obligatory on a young man wishing to marry a girl from the district that he should carry his bride on his back to the summit of this rock, and bring her down again. It appeared as if one might almost as well attempt to scale a church spire; but probably there are crevices and hollows which would make such a feat not altogether impossible.