At this part of the island the high interior plateau seems to descend by _one_ great step to the coast plains, and not by _two_, as it does farther north; for our aneroid told us that we came down twenty-five hundred feet yesterday, and that the stream at the foot of this hill is only five hundred or six hundred feet above sea-level. And the two lines of forest one crosses farther on are here united into one. The men and many of the women wear a rather high round skull-cap made of fine plait; the women wear little except a mat sewn together at the ends, so as to form a kind of sack, and fastened by a cord round the waist, and only occasionally pulled up high enough to cover the bosom. Those who are nursing infants have also a small figured mat about eighteen inches square on their backs and suspended by a cord from the neck; this is called _lòndo_, and is used to protect the child from the sun or rain, as it lies in a fold of the mat above the girdle. Some of the men wear a mat as a _làmba_, and only a few have _làmbas_ of coarse _rofìa_ or hemp cloth. The people here blacken their teeth with a root, which gives them an unpleasant appearance as they open their mouths; not all the teeth, however, are thus disfigured, but chiefly those at the back, leaving the front ones white; in some cases the lower teeth are alternately black and white. The morning of one of our four days at Ivòhitròsa was employed in trying to get a good view of the largest of the waterfalls which pour down into the large valley already mentioned. Mounting a spur of the main hills, we had a good view of this chief fall up a deep gorge to the south, and so opening into the main valley as not to be visible from the village. This is certainly a most magnificent fall of water. The valley ends in a semicircular wall of rock crowned by forest, and over this pours at one leap the river Màtitànana. Knowing the heights of some of the neighbouring hills, we judged that the fall could not be less than from five hundred to six hundred feet in depth, and from the foot rises a continual cloud of spray, like smoke, with a roar which reverberates up the rocky sides of the valley; even from two or three miles’ distance, which was as near as we could get, it was a very grand sight. [Sidenote: MALAGASY RASPBERRIES] While on this little excursion we had a feast of another kind. On our way home we came across a large cluster of bushes full of wild raspberries. This fruit is common on the borders of the forest, but we never before saw it in such quantities, or of so large a size, or of so sweet a taste. The Malagasy raspberry is a beautiful scarlet fruit, larger than the European kind; and while perhaps not quite equal in flavour to those grown in England, is by no means to be despised; and we were able on that day to enjoy it to our heart’s content. [Illustration: A GROUP OF TANÀLA GIRLS IN FULL DRESS] [Illustration: TANÀLA GIRLS SINGING AND CLAPPING HANDS]