We spent a pleasant Sunday at Mevatanâna. The little chapel was well filled: our own bearers making a considerable addition to the usual congregation. Some twenty of them presented to the native pastor their tickets of membership in churches in the Capital and joined with the local members and ourselves at the communion of the Lord’s Supper. Mr. Jukes, who speaks Malagasy well, preached an excellent sermon, from the text, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” &c., which was listened to with deep attention. We had a second service in the afternoon, with sermons from our two chaplains. But we were not impressed with the spiritual life of the people. They seemed very ignorant, very dead. There was no leader among them; no man of real, spiritual force, who by his example and his teachings could stimulate his brethren. The native pastor could scarcely read and seemed in other ways an ignorant man. I do not think there was any school in the town. We could not but regret that things were so backward. At times it has been thought and said, that by the route of the Ikopa, boats and steamers could reach to within sixty miles of the Capital. The student of the Map, which represents our route, can form his own opinion on this subject. Near the sea at certain seasons there are shallows. All about Mevatanána and above the influence of the tides, the shallows are more numerous and more formidable. Above Mevatanána the river is full of rocks and islands. And above Nósifito come the great cataracts, from which upward to the Fárahántsana, the entire bed of the Ikopa, so far as we have heard, is a series of rocky rapids. Now Mevatanána is one hundred and fifty miles from the Capital: and as we shall see is ninety miles from Mojangá. From Mevatanána at least all the upward trade must go by land.