time of Governor la Haye, Madagascar was
for some time free from European occupation,
being only visited by trading-ships. It was
honoured also as a favourite resort of pirates.
In 1746 the French re- occupied their settlement
upon St. Mary's Island, where the
settlers were destroyed by coast fever. The
place was re-peopled from Mauritius, and
this time the settlers were killed by the
natives. A second colony from Mauritius
soon afterwards made good its footing. In
1774, Count Benyowsky landed in the Bay of
Antongil, opposite St. Mary's, convened and
conciliated chiefs, made roads, erected public
buildings, a fort, and a sanitarium. Two
years afterwards, he quitted the French
settlement to operate upon his own account;
and ten years after that was consequently
killed by soldiers from Mauritius. Soon after
the departure of Benyowsky, the Revolution
in France left no leisure for much care
concerning Madagascar; but, in 1792, the
National Assembly sent M. Lescallier on a
mission to ascertain the feeling of the
Malagasy towards Europeans. He reported that
"Europeans have hardly ever visited this
island but to ill-treat the natives, and to
exact forced services from them; to excite
and foment quarrels among them, for the
purpose of purchasing the slaves that are
taken on both sides in the consequent wars:
in a word, they have left no other marks of
having been there but the effects of their
cupidity."

In 1807 the settlement called Foule-Pointe
was established on the coast by Frenchmen,
from Mauritius, who became victims to the
coast fever. Mauritius and Bourbon are two
little islands lying east of the great island
Madagascar; and to these islands Madagascar
supplies beef, draught cattle, and other
necessaries, for which they trade chiefly with the
Madagascar port of Tamatave. By the
capitulation of 1810, Bourbon and Mauritius,
with their dependencies, were ceded, by
conquest, to the English, by whom the island of
Bourbon was returned, as a gift, to Louis the
Eighteenth. The governor and merchants of
Bourbon, fearing that Mauritius might then
claim a monopoly of the supplies from
Madagascar, prompted an arrangement by which
the French agents (whom our men-of-war had
ordered to quit Tamatave and the other ports)
were suffered to return. The soldiers sent
by Sir Robert Farquhar, as governor of
Mauritius, to garrison the vacated French
forts, were thinned by fever; and the survivors
having been recalled, a British agent
only was appointed to reside in Madagascar.
In 1815, an English settlement was founded
at Fort Loquez; but the British agent and
the settlers were massacred in consequence of
"a stupid misunderstanding " on the part of
one blockhead chief, whom the natives put
afterwards to death for his stupidity. The
settlement was re-established in 1816, under the
management of Captain Le Sagez. England
claimed more territory, as an indemnification
for her subjects' lives; and about one
hundred square miles were ceded by the
natives—as much as the eye could see from
a high mountain. This ceded territory lay
between Cape East and the extreme north
point of Madagascar, comprehending the
peninsula and Bay of Diego Famen. A treaty
was made in the next year with Radama, an
Ovah chieftain, for the comprehension of
which it is necessary that we now discuss
some native Malagasy politics.

In addition to the war of race between the
Malay and Sakalave natives, politics in
Madagascar have of course been diversified by
contests among all the petty tribes into which
each race is divided. The Sakalave folks are
brave and bold; and on the ground to which
they have retired they are a fair match for
the Ovahs. The Ovahs hold the west coast
and the centre of the country. They
peopled Madagascar, doubtless, long before
Mohammed's birth, and are not Mussulmen.
They worship wooden idols, very
badly carved, with such names as Rahilimalaza
(the little-but-good), Ramahavaly,
and so on. These idols have to be consulted
in their fads. The " fady " that profanes one
idol is a pig, for example, and another idol is
shocked at a snail. Ovahs think that the
earth is like a dish, the sky a cover to it,
and suppose that people living on the confines
of the world can literally climb the skies.
They would all honour Zadkiel; and it would
be his business, as an astrologer, to tell them,
as he tells us, the unlucky days and hours.
All children then born are immediately
destroyed; also all children with whose stars
the astrologer is badly satisfied,—the destroyer
being in each case the father or the nearest
relative. They try offenders in the open air,
with all the people for a jury, and immediate
punishment of those found guilty by the
public voice; or they try by the Tangena
(palm tree) ordeal, which reminds us of our
own middle ages. The suspected person subjected
to this ordeal first eats as much rice as
he pleases; secondly, he swallows three pills
of the skin of a chicken; thirdly, he takes a
dose of poison, namely, the kernel of the
Tangena fruit, mixed up with juice from the
banana tree. He is then provisionally cursed,
while he drinks enough warm water to
produce active vomiting. If the three pills
return, the man is innocent, and may go free;
that is, if he escape the action of the poison;
most likely he will. But if a bit of chicken
skin remain behind, he is found guilty, and
strangled.

A little more than half a century ago, an
Ovah chief, Adrianampoinimerina, whom we
must call, for shortness, What 's-his-name,
subdued his neighbours, and residing in the
central province of Ankova, in its central
town, Tananariva, which we now denominate
the capital of Madagascar, was paramount in
any place within a radius of fifty miles from