Thursday’s journey, although shorter than that of most days, was perhaps the most difficult of all, especially the morning division of it—hills steeper than ever, and, if possible, rougher footpaths, so that we were often obliged to get down and walk, making the journey very fatiguing. For nearly three hours we were passing through dense forest, and in some places the path was really frightful. I do not wonder that a small company of soldiers brought up in the early years of the century by Captain Le Sage laid themselves down in despair at the difficulties of the roads they had to traverse. I found along the roadside several varieties of those beautiful-leaved plants, veined with scarlet and buff, which were so much cultivated in England about that time. Ferns of all kinds were very abundant, from the minutest species to the great tree-fern. Our afternoon’s journey took us for some distance along a beautiful river which foamed and roared over the rocks in its course, and which we forded repeatedly. The path was most picturesque, but very fatiguing; in many places the track could hardly be distinguished at all from the dense rank growth of plants and long grass. We arrived at Béfòrona at one o’clock and fully intended to have proceeded another stage, as it was so early in the afternoon, but we found our men so exhausted that we were obliged to stay there for the rest of the day. [Sidenote: FOREST REGIONS] Here it may be noted that we had now entered some way into the lower and wider of the two belts of dense forest which extend for several hundred miles along the eastern side of Madagascar, and cover the mountains which form the great ramparts of the highland of the interior. There is continuous forest from nearly the north of the island to almost the southern extremity; its greatest width is about fifty miles, north of Antongil Bay; but to the south of the Antsihànaka province it divides into two. Of these two belts, the upper one, which clothes the edge of the highland, is the narrowest, being not much above ten or twelve miles across, but the lower belt is from twice to three times that breadth. On the western side of Madagascar there is no such continuous line of forest; there are, it is true, many extensive portions covered with wood, but in many places the vegetation consists more of scattered clumps of trees; while in the south-west, which is the driest part of the island, the prevailing trees and shrubs are euphorbia, and are spiny in character. Mr Baron reckoned that an area of nearly thirty thousand square miles of the whole surface is forest-covered country. We shall have other opportunities of examining these extensive forest regions, so all we need say further at present about them is, that no one with any eye for the beautiful and wonderful can pass through them without astonishment and delight. The variety and luxuriance of the foliage, the great height of many of the trees, the countless