s considered good fish. The standard
coin is the Spanish dollar, but one will find every variety of European
and American money in circulation among them. The method of clipping
and weighing the small change might be thought somewhat cumbrous in
European markets, for the dollar is cut up into eight _sikajy_, (each
about sixpence); the sikajy into nine _eranambatra_, and each
eranambatra into ten _vary-venty_, each of which last is about the
weight of a plump grain of rice. Four weights, marked with a government
stamp, are used in weighing the money. These weights are equal,
respectively, to about a half-a-dollar, a quarter-dollar, sixpence, and
fourpence. Other amounts are obtained by varying these in the opposite
scales and adding grains of rice. But all this forms no difficulty in
Madagascar. Like most Easterns the natives there dearly love to haggle
and prolong a bargain--as our travellers found to their amusement that
day; for not only were the principals vociferous in their disputatious,
but the bystanders entered into the spirit of the thing and volunteered
their opinions!

Profound was the interest of the white men in this market, and deep was
the absorption of Ebony, for that amiable negro had a faculty of totally
forgetting himself and absolutely projecting himself into the shoes of
other people, thus identifying himself with their interests--a faculty
which cost him many anxious, indignant, pathetic, and hilarious moments.

"Das a most 'straor'nary sight," he said, looking round with glistening
eyes and expanded lips at the crowds of people who pressed along the
road leading to Zoma, the great market-place.

"By the way they stare at you, Ebony," said Hockins, "they evidently
think _you_ something 'straor'nary!"

"Not at all, 'Ockins. You's wrong, as usual," retorted the negro. "Dey
quite used to black mans, but I tink dis de fust time dat some ob dem
hab saw a man wid a face like putty."

There was indeed some ground for the negro's remark, for the people
crowded round our heroes and gazed at them with undisguised interest.

The market-place was well suited to give some idea of the various types
of countenance among the different tribes from distant parts of the
island, also for making acquaintance with the products of the country
and the manufactures of the people. It was a sort of museum and centre
of commerce combined, with all the varied incidents, comical,
semi-tragic, and otherwise, for