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chap. xx. PHYSICAL PECULIARITIES OP THE PEOPLE. 301 projecting. The top of the head was round and full, the lower part of the back of the head flat, and almost forming a straight line from the back of the crown to the neck. The hair was jet black, crisp, and sometimes curly, usually fastened in two or three round balls at the side of the head, and braided into a sort of queue behind. When inclined to be woolly, it was loosely so. I never saw the hair of any Malagasy so woolly as that of some of the African tribes, the most remarkable instance of which to me was that of Sechele, the tall noble looking chief of Kolobeng, whom I saw at Cape Town, and the covering of whose finely formed head hung down, not in ringlets, but in cords of the most closely matted fine woolly hair. In person, the Malagasy appeared to me generally well formed, with perhaps some little disproportion in the short ness of the neck. The chest, however, was well developed, the trunk broad, the limbs muscular, the gait firm, and the complexion a rich warm brown. I scarcely saw a deformed person in the country. The women were generally covered from the neck to the ankles; but the men at work in the fields often wore a piece of cloth round their waists. Few, if any, ornaments, except a crocodile’s tooth, or beads on a string tied round the wrist, were worn by the common people. Soon after seven in the morning we resumed our journey, our company being now reduced to about seventy persons, and the packages also being diminished to twenty-five. Our route lay over a richly wooded fertile country, diversified by masses of rock, chiefly quartz, sometimes of a beautiful pink colour, and occasionally a species of basalt. Since we had left the lower country, the rofia had become smaller and less frequent, but the traveller’s tree was abund ant on the sides of the hills and in the valleys, and in every moist part of the country, appearing at this elevation to attain its greatest perfection. This tree, Urania speciosa, is