Description
Antique print dated 1895.
The page is over 115 years old and in good condition.
In order to enhance and protect the page we have set in within a bespoke frame and mount.
Frame size 400mm x 370mm. available also in a
gold frame, your choice. RtW.275.
Entitled – Antananarivo. The Market Place, Antananarivo.
From a Photo by Colonel Stewart.
Below the picture an inscription reads:
Antananarivo. – Tamatave, the port of Madagascar, is reached from Durban in six days by Sir Donald Currie’s magnificently appointed steamers (Castle Line).
We are indebted for photographs of this remote and little-explored region to an English officer, Colonel Stewart, who personally took them, as being likely to interest the English public at a time when the “Island Continent” is so prominently before the world.
There are no roads, properly so called, in Madagascar, but merely tracks and beaten paths which can be traversed by men and cattle, but, except on level plains, are impracticable for wheeled vehicles.
Some of the trained runners and native bearers of Madagascar, however, are so accustomed to travel long distances on foot, that they have been known to accomplish the journey from Tamatave to Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, a distance of about 200 miles, in four days, the journey being performed over rough and rocky hills, long descents and ascents slippery with mud, rapid streams without bridges, dense forests and deep sloughs, through which it is impossible to move rapidly.
Antananarivo is built upon the summit and slopes of a long and lofty hill of granite and basalt rock, which rises from a comparatively level part of the province of Imerina.
The summit and sides of the hill on which the city stands are covered with buildings.
The houses are built on the declivities by means of artifically levelled terraces, formed one above another, but most irregularly.
There are only three or four streets or principal roads through the dense mass of houses, the largest thoroughfare dividing the town east and west, from which branch innumerable small pathways leading between the houses, where, however, room is scarcely left in some places for two foot passengers to pass.
The principal market-place, shown in the above view, is about a third of a mile from the Memorial Church, and occupies a large, irregularly-square piece of ground on a slight elevation.
Market is held here on a Friday.
If you buy an item and then see it relisted this is because we occasionally have more than one available, each page is
original and not a photocopy.
Thank you for looking, please visit our shop.
