Outside this village the following morning we passed a shoe—or rather sandal—market, with scores of pairs of rough bullock-hide sandals for sale. I noticed also that everyone we passed carried a pair fastened to his or her burdens. Although we had to go up and, of course, down again, a long ascent, the route was less difficult and fatiguing than are those we often traversed in Imèrina, and far less so than the roads to the eastern coast through the forest. The increasing temperature told us that we were getting to a lower level; indeed all the western side of Madagascar is hotter than the eastern side, as it is deprived of the cool south-east trade-wind from the Indian Ocean. At the village where we stopped for the night, all the dwelling-houses were made of the gigantic bamboo-like grass called _bàraràta_, although the school church which served us for a lodging was of clay. The place had a double entrance gateway, one of them being a low narrow tunnel; and like most of these villages had a great quantity of cattle brought into it, for security every evening. In consequence, the whole place was covered with a foot or two of manure; and it was here that our friend, Mr Grainge, stopping for the night the previous year, had an experience which I will give in his own words. [Sidenote: AN UNSAVOURY CAMPING PLACE] “On entering,” he says, “we raised a considerable amount of dust and general astonishment; for wishing to pitch our tent inside the village, we set a few of our men to sweep away the filth from the cleanest spot we could select. You may guess the result. I first tried to get to the windward of the horrible cloud, but not being able to find that desirable quarter, as there happened to be no wind at the time, I sent a man to fetch water and then ran away until the atmosphere cleared. I had better have stopped, for, running through the first hole in the entrenchment of the village, I heard a cry of ‘_Omby ó!_’ (‘The cattle!’), and saw the head of an ox, closely followed by his tail, coming through the gap. As the people evidently expected to see me run, I stood my ground with true British pig-headedness and waited in the narrow ditch for the big beast to pass; but this one was closely followed by another, and that by a third—the whole of the herds were coming in for the night, and the fosse was soon as full of oxen as of dust. There was no escape; grunting, puffing, blowing, and bellowing, in they came, and with nothing but bare hands to smack them, I was hustled and jostled, bumped and butted, pushed and driven about, until, after three-quarters of an hour, I came out in company with the last calf, choked with dust, streaming with perspiration, and inwardly vowing that the very next time I heard the cry of ‘_Omby ó!_’ I would run for it, however undignified it might appear.”