As Ambinàny, the Tanàla[28] chief, whose village we were bound for, did not make his appearance, we went off in the afternoon to another village, Iòlomàka, about three or four miles away to the south-east. It was a cold unpleasant ride in the drizzling rain. We reached the village, which is situated on a bare hill, in an hour and a quarter, and with some difficulty found a tolerably level place on which to pitch the tent, but everything was wet. The rain came down faster than ever, and began to come through the canvas in some places. During the afternoon we in our tent formed for the villagers a free, and evidently popular, exhibition, which might have been entitled, “The Travelling Foreigners in their Tent.” We and our belongings, and our most trivial actions, were the subject of intensest interest to the people. They came peeping in and, uninvited, took their seats to gaze. I suspect they thought we travelled in a style of Oriental magnificence, for my companion’s gorgeous striped rug evidently struck them as being the _ne plus ultra_ of earthly grandeur. But _we_ did not look upon ourselves this evening quite in that light; for the slightly higher ground on two sides of the tent led the water _into_ the structure, and there was soon a respectable-sized pool on my friend’s side of the tent, above which the boxes had to be raised by stones and tent-hammers; while the drip upon our beds raised the probability that we might be able to take our baths in the morning before getting up. It was our dampest experience hitherto of tent life. The following evening found us at Ivòhitròsa, after one of the most difficult and fatiguing journeys we had ever taken in Madagascar. It was quite dark when we arrived here, wet, weary, muddy and hungry, having eaten no food since the morning. [Sidenote: INTERESTED PUBLIC]