The master bricklayer failed us. He sent some professed bricklayers in his place, but if they were bricklayers they were surely the poorest who ever laid bricks. They were either ignorant of the use of the plumb-rule, or were too lazy, or in too great a hurry to get the walls rushed up to use it, with the result that they built the walls off the plumb. In my anxiety to overtake the work I foolishly kept on all my classes and district duties. I ought to have stood beside these men and seen every brick laid; but I regarded this as a sheer waste of time, with so much teaching, preaching, and other mission work to be done. Those who gave up all their district work for months, while their houses were being built, acted wisely. The result was that I would often return home, after an exhausting day, to find that the walls had been run up several inches off the plumb. To have our bedrooms as far from the ground as possible, for health’s sake, the manse was built double-storied, as is most desirable in a malarious district. It was the first two-storied house built in that part of the island, and as its walls rose they caused much talk among the people. At last Razàka came to ask me if I quite understood what I was doing. There had never been such a high house built there, and the people were afraid it might fall or be blown down by the frequent hurricanes. I assured him that I quite understood what I was about, and that there was no fear of the house falling or being blown down. It stood all the hurricanes we had, some of them very severe, and might have lasted for another thirty years, but for its being burnt down in 1897. On the coasts of Madagascar, and for about half or two-thirds of the way up to Antanànarìvo, the native huts are built of a framework of poles and bamboo, filled in with bulrushes, and roofed with the leaves of the so-called ‘traveller’s tree,’ a kind of palm. In Central Madagascar the huts are built of layers of mud, one layer being allowed to dry before the next is laid on. The houses are built of sun-dried brick. In many cases now--especially in the capital--the outside walls are of burnt, and the inside of sun-dried brick. The roofs were thatched with flags from the swamps, or with rank grass from the moors or the stream sides. All houses in the capital have now to be tiled for fear of fire. We built our house of sun-dried brick. There is no frost in Madagascar, so well-built houses, with verandah round, if the roof is kept in repair and the outside walls are replastered from time to time, will stand for fifty years.