We came the next day to a very boggy and difficult rice-valley. Hereabouts the people make their _vàlam-parìhy_, or low earthen banks between the rice-fields, with a foundation of small stakes stuck in the ground, apparently to hold the earth together, as it seems less tenacious and binding than that in Imèrina. When a good deal of the earth has been washed away, it may easily be imagined that it is not a pleasant thing walking along these banks. During the afternoon we passed for some time over a slightly hollow tract thickly covered with rounded lumps of dark brown rock resembling slag or scoria, and full of holes like those produced by air-bubbles when the mass was in a state of fusion. These were of all sizes, from a yard or two to an inch in diameter, while the ground was covered with rounded pebbles of the same material, of the size of small beans. This must surely have been the bed of some ancient stream, long since diverted into other channels by subsequent elevation of the surface. But whence was this volcanic substance derived? For many miles westward there seems no broken or rugged surface, nor anything to indicate subterranean disturbance. Probably the great isolated mountain of Ivòhibé, which we have seen for several days far away to the west, is an extinct volcano, like so many hills farther north; and the ancient stream has at some remote period cut through a dyke of lava and brought the rolled and rounded fragments down its bed. Walking about in the brilliant moonlight after our evening meal, in a short time there was quite a crowd gathered together to watch the extraordinary spectacle of two foreigners walking backwards and forwards for no discoverable earthly purpose. After a little while we stopped and began to talk to them, telling them of the old, but to them perfectly new, story of the glad tidings, and of that “faithful saying” which was worthy of their, and of all men’s, “acceptation.”