On the Monday morning, on leaving Ambòhimànga, we had to cross the river at the foot of the hill, and this made the _thirtieth_ time we had to be ferried across a river with all our men and property, and glad we were that it was the last. A description of our water conveyances would include bamboo rafts, canoes great and small, especially the latter, canoes with one end rotted away or broken off, and stuffed with clay, and craft so small that they seemed rather fitted for children’s playthings than for business. The forest became thinner as we travelled to the north-west, and this was due to the custom of the Tanàla, who cut down the woods and sow the rice in the ashes of the trees which have been burnt; for the people do not plant much in one place, but remove their village to another spot after getting a crop or two. This morning we lost the traveller’s tree, which does not grow at heights much above two thousand feet above the sea; and in the afternoon we also lost sight of the graceful bamboo. The following morning brought us to steep ascents of nine hundred and fifty feet, of four hundred and twenty, and then of six hundred feet successively, the last bringing us to Ivòhitràmbo (lofty town), well named, for it has a most elevated situation and higher than a good deal of the interior table-land to the west. I had noticed all the previous afternoon that on the very summit of the highest ground to the north was a lofty cone of rock. Perched upon this like an eagle’s nest was part of the village, the rest of the houses being a hundred and forty feet lower. The summit was forty-seven hundred and fifty feet above the sea; we were now on the high land of the interior and had come up twenty-four hundred and fifty feet since we breakfasted. As may be supposed, the view was most extensive; the plains of North Bétsiléo were not far distant, and soon we came to the long bare rolling downs of the central provinces. Uninteresting as these generally appear after four or five months without rain, they looked home-like, and the keen air seemed bracing and invigorating. We began to see rice-fields again and the scattered round _vàla_ of the Bétsiléo. We had got into the country of a different tribe of people, with different houses, speech and customs. At the village where we stopped for the night was a good timber house, with elaborately carved central pillars, and we began to see again the carved memorial posts, which had so much interested us on our journey south. [Sidenote: PECULIAR TOMBS] We noticed again the peculiar tombs of the Bétsiléo; these, which consist of a large square of stones, are not, as in Imèrina, the real burial-places; for the actual tomb is often twenty feet below the ground, a stone chamber, to which access is gained by a long inclined passage opening out at a distance of eighty or a hundred feet from the tomb.