There is no doubt something in this idea, as I have proved in my own person during the past twenty years; for after suffering greatly from malarial fever during the last five years of our first period of service, having been prostrated with it ten times, I have only had four mild attacks of fever since. It is necessary to state, however, that we have not lived in such a malarious district during the last twenty years as we did during the first ten. By exercising greater care, by taking quinine and a certain form of iron, and by other precautions, such as good food, wearing flannel, or lamb’s wool underclothing, &c., we have been able to keep ourselves as near normal health as possible. Once you get below par in the tropics, it usually means fever or something worse. Dr. Livingstone says that ‘living in a malarious district, the whole tone is so lowered through the blood being poisoned, that you are not only liable to all the ills that flesh is heir to; but that if you do get any of them, you have it ten times worse.’ Having settled that Fìhàonana was the right place for our work, we sought out a hut in which we could live until I built a house. We found a large mud hut, some twenty feet by twelve, in the centre of the village of Fìhàonana. Although it was far from what we would have liked in the way of a dwelling, it was the best to be had; so we took it, had it cleaned out, and the walls whitewashed. It was the ordinary mud hut of Central Madagascar, an oblong structure with mud walls, earthen floor, and a pillar in the centre for the support of the thatched roof. There was no ceiling, of course, and as the thatch was thin we suffered from the bitter east winds during the nights of the cold season. There were three small apertures in the walls, one at each side and one in the end, which served the purpose of windows, or rather wind-holes, for they let very little light into the hut. I had frames filled with glass fitted into these apertures, and this helped to keep the dust out of the hut, but did not increase the scanty supply of light. As we were in the middle of a Malagasy village, our surroundings were not of the sweetest, especially as in those days the villages of Vònizòngo swarmed with pigs. Whenever we opened the door these creatures came into the hut. Of course I helped them out, to the astonishment of the natives, with whom the pigs were great favourites. People and porkers lived and slept in the same hut; and to my remonstrances the people replied: ‘The pigs help to keep the hut warm on the cold nights, sir.’