of forest—went on filling up the valleys with the rich black and blue loam; gradually the lake became less and less deep; slowly the river cut out its bed; and then man came on the scene, and the old native kings aided nature by embanking the river; the marshes became rice-fields and supplied with food the present large population which lives all around it. From this elevated point at least a hundred small towns and villages can be recognised, many of them marked by the tiled roof, and often the tower, of the village church, which shines out distinctly amid the brown thatched roofs of most of the houses. This view from the summit of the capital is certainly an unrivalled one, in Madagascar at least, for its variety and extent, as well as for the human interest of its different parts, as shown by the large population, the great area of cultivated land, the embanked rivers, and the streams and water-channels for irrigation seen in every direction. [Illustration: POUNDING AND WINNOWING RICE A palanquin bearer is in the doorway] [Illustration: A HOVA MIDDLE-CLASS FAMILY AT A MEAL Rice is the staple food, with a meat or vegetable relish] SPRINGTIME: SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER.—With the early days of September we may usually say that springtime in Imèrina fairly sets in, and that the year in its natural aspects properly commences. By a true instinct, arising doubtless from long observation of the change of the seasons, the Malagasy call this time _Lòhataona_—_i.e._ “the head, or beginning, of the year”—when nature seems to awake from the comparative deadness of the cold and dry winter months, during which the country has looked bare and uninviting, but now begins again to give promise of fertility and verdure. The keen cold winds and drizzly showers of the past few weeks give place to warmer air and clearer skies, and although usually there is but little rain during September, the deciduous trees begin to put forth their leaves, and flower-buds appear as heralds of the fuller display of vegetable life which will be seen after the rains have fallen. [Sidenote: RICE-FIELDS] The great rice-plain to the west of Antanànarìvo still looks, during the early days of the _Lòhataona_, bare and brown; but, if we examine the prospect more closely, we shall see that in various places, where the plain borders the low rising grounds on which the villages are built, there are bright patches of vivid green. These are the _kètsa_ grounds or smaller rice-fields, where the rice is first sown thick and broadcast, and where it grows for a month or two before being planted out in the larger fields, which are divided from each other by a low bank of earth, a few inches broad and only a foot or two in height.