The congregations made most marked progress during that year in the grace of generosity to the cause of God, and for the support of the school teachers. The previous year, the twelve small churches under the charge of the trained evangelist had raised their share of his salary for the year--£4 16_s._--in advance, the first time that such a thing had been done; but during that year the unprecedented sum of £30, equal to them to £150, was raised in the district _a whole year in advance_, to pay the people’s share of the salaries of six trained teachers settled among them, and four evangelists about to be settled. Such a thing had never been done before in the history of the island. We felt very pleased and thankful for what we had been able to teach the people to do; the more so, as we had the satisfaction of knowing that we were not only the first, but up till then, at least, the only missionaries in the island who had been able to persuade the Malagasy to raise such a very large sum a whole year in advance in order to pay their share of the salaries of their teachers and evangelists. Now and then in some quarters there were signs below the surface of remnants of heathenism and semi-heathenism. We had some displays of this nature during the epidemic, when many were panic-stricken. We had one sad sample during that year of the heathenism still remaining brought to light by the death of the young wife of one of our trained teachers. Her parents, although they attended the village church occasionally, were evidently heathens at heart. Her father was a retired Hova governor, reputed to be rich. He made a great funeral feast, for which a number of oxen, sheep, and pigs were killed. The corpse of his daughter was rolled in thirty-four silk _làmbas_ (plaids), while all the best and most expensive dresses and ornaments, &c., belonging to herself and her mother, were placed in the family tomb along with the corpse. Money to the amount of £2 4_s._, equivalent to £11, was put into her grave-clothes for expenses in the other world, while £3, equivalent to £15, was paid to the so-called musicians who made day and night hideous by their discordant noises from the time of her death to that of her burial, to keep the bad spirits at a distance, and little wonder if they did! In all, £83 2_s._ 9_d._, equivalent to £415 13_s._ 9_d._, was worse than wasted over the funeral of that poor girl by her heathen parents. In my long journeys in Madagascar, I always suffered from the heat--a sort of mild form of something of the nature of heat-apoplexy I should suppose--and hence in our journeys from our station to the capital or back, we always started very early in the morning, generally at four, often at two o’clock, so as to get to the journey’s end before the hottest and most exhausting part of the day--about three in the afternoon. Though generally suffering from headache by the time I got in, a night’s rest as a rule set me right again.