Next morning we were stirring early and left Mòramànga while it was yet dusk. There was a thick mist, and my men were shivering with the cold, for we were now two thousand nine hundred feet above the sea, and their scanty clothing was but a poor protection. For an hour or two we saw little except for a few yards around us; but as the sun rose the fog rolled up like a vast curtain, revealing the line of the Ifòdy and Angàvo hills straight before us; the slopes were partly covered with trees, but a good deal of their surface was brown and bare. In the deepest of the many valleys which cut the surface of the Ankay plain runs a beautiful and rapid river, the Mangòro, about one hundred and fifty feet wide where we crossed it in canoes. This is the longest river of the east coast, and would make a fine means of access to the interior, were its course not interrupted by rapids and cataracts at many points. Soon after crossing the river we commenced the ascent of Ifòdy, a very steep and difficult path, for an hour or more; but as we mounted higher and higher a glorious prospect gradually revealed itself. Looking back after we had reached the summit, there was the Mòramànga plain, bounded by the distant forest stretching away north and south, until lost in the dim distance, while below us the Mangòro could be seen in a wavy blue line in the Ankay plain. Before us, to the left, was a lovely valley, fertile and green with rice-fields, watered by the Valàla river and shut in by the Angàvo range of mountains, while on the right was a confused mass of hills, looking like a mighty sea which had suddenly been hardened and fixed in its tossings. [Sidenote: AN EXTRAORDINARY NEST]