During the day we observed many beautiful butterflies about the hill: and several were brought to us by the children, pinned to a small stick by a thorn. They were beautifully marked with green and black and gold. The day closed with one of the finest sunsets I have seen in the East. As we stood on the platform at the top of the hill, we had an immense territory under our eyes. The whole was lighted up by the departing sun with a gorgeousness and splendour indescribable. The colour of the whole was a rich golden red. Every hill and valley, high and low, was bathed in the glowing radiance, which seemed not of earth but of heaven. [Illustration: THE FALLS OF THE IKOPA. ] On our return home, we bent our course a little to the northward that we might visit the falls of the Ikopa. These falls are not only very striking in themselves, but the barrier reef over which the river leaps occupies a most important position in the economy of the province. The sedimentary clay of Madagascar yields so readily to the action of water, and is so speedily scored into gullies and ravines, that if it had nothing to stay its course, broad plains would be impossible; only long and narrow rice cultivation would be practicable. The truth of this we have seen again and again in the scored and riven districts of Menabe and Ankay, where it is difficult to find level ground. On the western side of Imerina, at the point to which the line of its drainage by the Ikopa tends, there is in God’s good providence a remarkable reef of hard gneiss rocks. This reef retains the waters of the river at a certain fixed height. Age has passed after age, generation after generation: but the waters remain. The clay hills of Imerina have been melting away; but the silt at their feet, and the rich soil that has been formed, have only found a more perfect level. They cannot be wasted and washed away, over the stern barrier which retains the waters: and so the plain of Imerina, twelve hundred square miles in size, has only grown richer, as its swamps were cleared of reeds, and has become more fit to feed the multitudes of people that cluster in the hundreds of villages which stud its fertile bosom. A similar reef of rocks at Sinjoarivo retains the waters of the Onibe in the Ankisitra plain: and yet another, the winding stream of the Mánantánana, which waters though imperfectly the broad basin of Ambohimandroso. It is due entirely to these rocky barriers that this rich silt and the fertilising streams, which support a million lives have found a secure resting-place, four thousand feet above the sea.