The Betsimisárakas include the Sihánakas, the people of Ankáy, and (I think also) the Tanálas, all on the higher terrace between the lines of forest. These upper divisions of the tribe have separate names; but they are merely expressive of the localities to which the people have migrated. The Betániménas are those who occupy the “districts of red clay.” The Tanálas are the people of “the forest districts.” The Tankays live “in Ankay,” the “open land”; not concealed by or broken by long hills. The Sihánakas are (as we shall see) “the people of the lakes.” In no part of the country occupied by this tribe is the population concentrated and numerous: all their districts are thinly peopled. Important mistakes have been made in regard to these subdivisions. Both the Sihánakas and the Bezánozáno of Ankay have been described as Sákalávas. But a visit to the districts which they inhabit shows at once that with the Sakalavas they have nothing to do. They are shut off from the latter by all but impassable mountains. They are Betsimisárakas in their houses, their dialects, and the dressing of their hair: and an examination of the country plainly indicates the points on the east coast, from which their people started. In regard to the still greater error of regarding the entire Betsimisáraka people as half-breed Arabs, there is even less to be said. The statement must have originated in some mistake. It might apply to a few people in and around the Arab colony of St. Mary’s; but it is wholly inapplicable to the entire people of the east coast. The Sákalávas are also divided into tribes: but there is little cohesion amongst them; they live separate from one another, and have frequent petty wars. Their numbers cannot be great, though they occupy a large tract of rich tropical country, which under a settled government and in diligent hands would yield vast quantities of produce. They have for ages been at feud with their Hova neighbours, ever ready to carry off their cattle and plunder their farmsteads and fields. The name they bear, “the tall cats,” is a complimentary title given by their Hova foes, who have found them as fierce and formidable with the ancient weapons as any wild cat to be met with in the woods. The Sakalávas have not been slow to return the compliment; and they contemptuously style the Hovas _ambóalámbo_, a mixture of the dog and the boar, “a set of vagabonds.”