The people in this part of the country, who are called Taisàka, all wear mats, as do the Tanàla and the Taimòro. To fasten the mat sack about their waists, they use a girdle of bark cloth. Some of this cloth (called _fànto_) is made by stripping off the bark of certain trees, so that the whole comes off in one piece, forming a kind of long bag, but open at each end. Another kind is made in a sheet of about six feet long by four wide. It is prepared by being hammered for a considerable time with a wooden mallet, the face of which is cut in cross lines. This is chiefly women’s work. Very few of the people had any garment made of woven cloth, indeed they seem to have little, if any, knowledge of spinning or weaving. On the other hand, they are clever in straw-work and in manufacturing mats and baskets. [Sidenote: TAISÀKA HOUSES] Their houses are very small, made of a slight framework and filled in with the midrib of the leaves of the traveller’s tree in the same way that the _zozòro_ (papyrus) is used in Imèrina, and looking almost exactly like _zozòro_. These leaf-stalks, which are called _falàfa_, are fixed together on long fine twigs so as to make a kind of stiff mat, the triangular stems easily fitting in alternately. These mats are the ordinary mattress, and are used in various other ways. One of them forms the door on either side of the house, being shifted to one side or another as required, and is kept from falling by sliding within a pole hung from the framework. The flooring, which is always raised above the ground, is made of the bark of the traveller’s tree, pressed flat so as to form a rough kind of boarding; while the thatch of every house is the leaves of the same tree, which forms a neat and fairly durable covering. Here also, as among the other coast tribes which we have seen, the traveller’s tree might be called with equal or greater propriety, “the builder’s tree.” The hearth is at one end of the house, in the centre, with a strong square framework above it, having two or three rows of shelves. The _tràno àmbo_, or elevated house for storing rice, seems common to every tribe we have visited since leaving the Bétsiléo province. The villages here are arranged in groups of from two to half-a-dozen in a line, and with only a small space between each group.