With the improvement in the huts and homes, there was also an improvement in the church buildings. The large mud huts were replaced by handsome brick buildings, with platform pulpits, and, in a few cases, with tiled roofs and glazed windows. CHAPTER X THE DEAD PAST ‘All the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord.’ --NUMBERS xiv. 21. In former times the Malagasy used to hold great feasts, rum-drinking and horrible orgies at the funerals of all people of any consequence. The corpse was rolled in a silk _làmba_, while all clothes, dresses, and jewellery belonging to the deceased were placed in the family or royal tomb, as the case might be, along with the corpse. I remember the death of a very old and famous chief, ‘the head of the _black_ people.’ It was stated that his corpse was rolled in eighty-four silk _làmba_! It was also the custom to fill the mouth of the corpse with cut money--silver cut up to the size of broken rice. If the deceased had been fond of rum during his or her lifetime, water-pots filled with it were placed in the tomb! The Malagasy of Central Madagascar had been in the habit for ages of opening the tombs of their ancestors at stated periods, removing the rotten _làmba_, and rolling the bones in new _làmba_. To purchase the new _làmba_ a levy was made on the descendants and clansmen of the deceased. Even the slaves of the various families were expected to contribute to _Ny mamàdika ny màty_, i. e. ‘the turning of the dead,’ which were often occasions for great gatherings at which there were feasting and drinking, music and dancing, for which bands of musicians and female singers--both being generally of the lowest and most abandoned of the community--were hired, and heathen orgies and hideous debauchery were the order of the days and of the nights. After the general acceptance of Christianity in the central provinces, there were often religious, or semi-religious, services and often preachings at those gatherings; but, as the after conduct of many was hardly consistent with such religious exercises, we were compelled to decline countenancing them and now they have almost died out or been put a stop to. Such were some of the customs of former times connected with the burial and turning of the dead, and probably similar customs are still rife in those parts of the island on which the new light has not yet dawned--two-thirds of the island being still in heathen darkness. About a million, perhaps, of the people of the central provinces have been reached in some way, and some at a few points on the coast; but the rest--some three millions--are still in a state of heathenism. There murder, infanticide, slavery, drunkenness, polygamy, obscenity, war and all the other horrors of heathenism and degradation are rampant.