“The queen’s female dancers opened the ball with the dreary Malagasey dance. These charming creatures were wrapped from top to toe in white simbus, and wore on their heads artificial, or, I should say, very inartificial flowers, standing up stiffly like little flagstaffs; they crowded into a group in such a way that they seemed all tied together. As often as they staggered past the queen’s balcony or the monument of King Radama, they repeated their salutes, and likewise at the end of every separate dance. After the female dancers had retired, the officers executed a very similar dance, only that they kept somewhat quicker time, and their gestures were more animated--that is to say, they lifted their feet rather higher than the performers of the other sex. Those who had hats and caps, waved them in the air from time to time, and set up a sharp howling, intended to represent cries of joy. “After the officers followed six couples of children in fancy dresses. The boys wore the old Spanish costume, or were attired as pages, and looked tolerably well; but the girls were perfect scarecrows. They wore old-fashioned French costumes--large, stiff petticoats, with short bodices--and their heads were quite loaded with ostrich feathers, flowers, and ribbons. After this little monkey community had performed certain polonaises, schottisches, and contre-danses, acquitting themselves, contrary to my expectation, with considerable skill, they bowed low and retired, making way for a larger company, the males likewise clad in the old Spanish, the females in the old French garb. “All these various costumes are commanded by the queen, who generally gets her ideas from pictures or engravings that come in her way. The ladies add to the costume prescribed by royalty whatever their own taste and invention may suggest, generally showing great boldness and originality in the combination of colours. I will give my readers an idea of what these costumes are like, by describing one of them. “The dress was of blue satin, with a border of orange colour, above which ran a broad stripe of bright cherry-coloured satin. The body, also of satin, with long skirt, shone with a brimstone hue, and a light sea green silk shawl was draped above it. The head was covered in such style with stiff, clumsily-made artificial flowers, with ostrich feathers, silk ribbons, glass beads, and all kinds of millinery, that the hair was entirely hidden--not that the fair one lost much thereby, but that I pitied her for the burden she had to carry. “The costumes of the other ladies showed similar contrasts in colour, and some of these tasteful dresses had been improved by a further stroke of ingenuity, being surmounted by high conical hats, very like those worn by the Tyrolese peasants.