It is only fair to say, however, that we saw Central Madagascar for the first time at its worst--in the middle of the cold season, when all is bleak, bare, and desolate-looking. In the early months of the year, after the first rains have fallen, when the young rice is appearing in the rice-fields, and the downs and hill-sides are covered with the fresh dark green grass, it is very different. It was at that season that the lamented Mr. Cameron, the war correspondent of _The Standard_, saw Central Madagascar in 1884, and although the beautiful little piece of word-painting, in which he tells us how it appeared to him, may seem slightly overdone, it is worth quoting, as the testimony of a man of such shrewdness and world-wide experience to the change that mission work had wrought over the once barbarous Hovas. He says: ‘Antanànarìvo itself was in sight; and we could plainly see the glass windows of the palace glistening in the morning sun on the top of the long hill on which the city is built. It was Sunday, and the people were clustering along the footpaths on their way to church, or sitting on the grass outside waiting for the service to begin, as they do at home. The women, who appeared to be in the majority, wore white cotton gowns, often neatly embroidered, and white, or black and white, striped _làmbas_ thrown gracefully over their shoulders. The men were clad also in cotton--white cotton pantaloons, cotton _làmbas_, and straw hats with large black silk bands. ‘In the morning sun the play of colours over the landscape was lovely. The dark green hills, studded with the brilliant red-brick houses of the inhabitants, whose white garments dotted the lanes and footpaths, contrasted with the brighter emerald of the rice-fields in the hollows. The soil everywhere is deep red, almost magenta in colour, and where the roads or pathways cross the hills, they shine out as if so many paint-brushes had streaked the country in broad red stripes. Above all, the spires of the strange city, set on the top of its mountain, with a deep blue sky for a background, added to the beauty of the scene. It was difficult to imagine that this peaceful country, with its pretty cottages, its innumerable chapels, whose bells were then calling its people to worship, and its troops of white-robed men and women answering the summons, was the barbarous Madagascar of twenty years ago[27].’ CHAPTER IV THE MORNING BREAKING ‘Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.’--ISAIAH lx. 1.