After some time we left the shore and proceeded through the woods, skirting one of those lagoons which run parallel with the coast nearly all the way from Tamatave to Andòvorànto. A good recent map of Madagascar will show that on this coast, for about three hundred miles south of Hivòndrona, there is a nearly continuous line of lakes and lagoons. They vary in distance from the sea from a hundred yards to a couple of miles; and in many places they look like a very straight river or a broad canal, while frequently they extend inland, spreading out into extensive sheets of water, two or three miles across. This peculiar formation is probably owing, in part at least, to slight changes of level in the land, so that the inner banks of the lagoons were possibly an old shore-line. But this chain of lagoons and lakes is no doubt chiefly due to east coast rivers being continually blocked up at their outlets by bars of sand, driven up by the prevailing south-east trade-wind and the southerly currents. So that the river waters are forced back into the lagoons until the pressure is so great that a breach is made, and the fresh water rushes through into the sea. On account of these sand-bars, hardly any east coast river can be entered by ships. The rivers, in fact, flow for the most of the time, not into the sea, but into the lagoons. These are not perfectly continuous, although out of that three hundred miles there are only about thirty miles where there are breaks in their continuity and where canoes have to be hauled for a few hundred yards, or for a mile or two, on the dry land separating them. It will at once occur to anyone travelling along this coast, as we did, that an uninterrupted waterway might be formed by cutting a few short canals to connect the separate lagoons, and so bring the coast towns into communication with Tamatave. That enlightened monarch, Radàma I. (1810-1828), did see this, and several thousand men were at one time employed in connecting the lagoons nearest Tamatave; but this work was interrupted by his death and never resumed by his successors. But soon after the French conquest the work was again taken in hand; canals were excavated, connecting all the lakes and lagoons between Tamatave and Andòvorànto; and for about twelve years a service of small steamers took passengers and goods between Hivòndrona and Brickaville, where, until quite recently, the railway commenced. Since the line of rails has now been completed direct to Tamatave, this waterway will not be of the same use, at least for passenger traffic. [Sidenote: COAST SCENERY]