As in all Christian missions abroad, our family life was very simple. The meals were breakfast, dinner and tea: the English supper, as in other tropical countries, being omitted. Beef was the chief meat available; and occasionally good mutton, with the long, fat tail. Turkeys, ducks and fowls we could buy in abundance. The potatoes were moderately good; stewed peaches are a dish for a king; and peas are becoming common: but the country has few green vegetables like those of England. The Malagasy have no cakes and no bread. These are made in the mission families from flour imported either from England or the Cape. Good coffee is being grown on the island: but our tea and sugar, sauces, oils and pickles, were all imported. Good jam is made from the Cape gooseberry, well known in India, and also from the mango: but all the usual English jams were imported from home. Of eggs and milk we could obtain a good supply: and butter was made in the house; on the primitive system of shaking the milk in a bottle. The stock of rice in the markets is large: but we could not get for an English table the many finer kinds which are so abundant in India. Our Malagasy servants were not nearly so skilful, so neat in their dress or so regular in their habits, as are servants in India. They have been under English training a comparatively short time; till recently many of them have not been able to earn money for themselves: and they have lacked the great motives to personal improvement and diligence by which the free service of India is stimulated. What curious costumes they would at times put on! What strange cookery they would produce! What vagaries they would be guilty of! Indian servants worry their mistresses enough in household arrangements: but I am afraid that the Malagasy servants are a greater worry still. My own servant was willing and attentive; but he was not strong: and certainly he went through a great deal and travelled far in the course of my wanderings in the island. His wages were six shillings a month for service; and two shillings extra for food: and on that magnificent sum he maintained a wife and two children; kept his house in repair; and subscribed systematically to his church funds. I learned much Malagasy from him: and with occasional interpretations of difficult matters from my host and hostess, we managed to understand each other tolerably well. Our house stood within a large garden: and the pains taken by my hostess in cultivating it were rewarded by seeing it for months together bright and gay with flowers. Many of our English flowers grew readily: but nothing could equal the coxcombs in their beauty. The flowers were enormous: we had eleven in the garden, all handsome in form and of a deep rich crimson. But one, the pride of the garden, grew to be thirty-two inches in length and eighteen inches across: and when finally cut off, close to the green stem, it weighed two pounds and a quarter. It was a truly splendid flower.