We spent a day at Imàhazòny, the last Hova military post in this direction, before plunging into the unknown route across the forest to the coast. The people from the little _vàla_ (homesteads) came running out to see us as we went by, most of them having never seen a white face before. We noticed how different the Bétsiléo dialect is from the Hova form of Malagasy; the _n_ in the latter is always nasal (_ng_) in the former; while numerous words are shorter than their equivalents as spoken in Imèrina; and the consonantal changes are numerous. Besides this, the vocabulary is very different for many things and actions. About two hours’ ride on the following morning brought us to the large village of Ivàlokiànja. We went into a house, the best in the village, for our lunch; it was the largest there, but was not so large as our tent (eleven feet square), and the walls were not six feet high. The door was a small square aperture, one foot ten inches wide by two feet four inches high, and its threshold two feet nine inches from the ground; so that getting into most Bétsiléo houses is quite a gymnastic feat, and it is difficult to understand how people could put themselves to so much needless inconvenience. Close to it, at the end of the house, was another door, or window (it was difficult to say which, as they are all pretty much the same size!), and opposite were two small openings about a foot and a half square. The hearth was opposite the door, and the fixed bedstead was in what is the window corner (north-west) in Hova houses. In this house was the first example I had seen of decorative carving in Malagasy houses; the external faces of the main posts being carved with a simple but effective ornament of squares and diagonals. There was also other ornamentation, much resembling the English Union Jack. The gables were filled in with a neat plaited work of split bamboo. The majority of the houses in this and most of the Bétsiléo villages are only about ten or twelve feet long by eight or nine feet wide, and the walls from three to five feet high. Hereabouts, the doors seem generally to face the north or north-west, and the house runs nearly east and west. Hova houses of the old style, on the contrary, are always placed with their length running north and south, and their single door and window facing the west—that is, on the lee-side of the house. [Illustration: TYPES OF CARVED ORNAMENTATION USED BY THE BÉTSILÉO MALAGASY IN THEIR BURIAL MEMORIALS AND THEIR HOUSES.] [Illustration: TYPES OF CARVED ORNAMENTATION USED BY THE BÉTSILÉO MALAGASY IN THEIR BURIAL MEMORIALS AND THEIR HOUSES.] [Sidenote: AN UNPLEASANT RIDE]