MADAGASCAR BEFORE THE CONQUEST.*
Ms. SIBREE has written so much on Madagascar in past years that this latest book of his could hardly be, and certainly is not, any such systematic study of the state of politics and society there before the French conquest as the title might lead the reader to expect. It does not amount to much more than a series of chapters of miscellaneous, but well- arranged, notes on various aspects of native life in the great island, and the physical setting of that life in the scenery and the seasons amid which and under the influence of which it is led, together with some facts illustrating the extent to which the work of English missions has been carried among the people. It might have been wished that so careful an observer, and one so familiar with the Malagasy, their institu- tions, and their character, as modified by missionary effort, when writing again, last year, of the scene of his life's work, had been in a position to give us a book of a more ambitions description, throwing direct light on the prospects of French domination and on its early workings in this new and great sphere of activity. In all probability, however, the pub- lication of such a book by an English missionary would have involved serious risk to the continuance of the writer's work in Madagascar, and might possibly have appreciably diminished the security of the position of English missionaries there generally. There is not a single note of hostility to France or Frenchmen in Mr. Sibree's book. On the contrary, the friendly relations subsisting between him and M. Grandidier, which have led that gentleman to allow Mr. Sibree to embody in his pages translations of several interesting passages from M. Grandidier's writings on the natural history, geography, and social customs of Madagascar, would suggest that Mr. Sibree is something of a persona grata to the present lords paramount of the island. But the essential features of the situation are such that, especially when, as is now very plainly the case, things are far from working smoothly • Madegtscar before the Conquest. By the Rev. James Sibree, Missionary of the L.M.S. London T. Fisher I.Jaw,r..
between the Malagasy and the protecting Power, the repre- sentatives of that Power might naturally prove very sensitive to anything in the shape of a thorough examination of their difficulties and their methods by an English missionary. How true this is may be readily conceived in the light of the in- formation given as to the results of missionary work in such chapters of the book before us as that describing Imerina, the central province of Madagascar, and Antananarivo, the capital. Indeed, to the careful reader, the more or less in- cidental manner in which the results of English mission work are referred to serves to enhance the illustrative value of those references.
The chapter on Imerina is full of all kinds of interesting observations on the physical features and antiquities of the province and life in its numerous villages. In area consider. ably larger than Yorkshire, and lying 4,000 ft. to 4,500ft. above the sea, " Imerina is a mountainous country, with but little level ground except on the western side of Antananarivo, where the dried-up bed of an extensive ancient lake forms the great rice-plain known as Bet- simitiltatra. This is the granary of the capital, and doubt- less accounts for its position, and for the comparatively dense population around it to the north, west, and south. But there are innumerable valleys where the slopes are terraced with rice-plots, like great green staircases, where the grain is first sown broadcast, and from which the young plants are taken up and transplanted in the larger fields along the banks of the rivers, and in the beds of small dried-up lakes of ancient date." Here it may be mentioned that in another chapter Mr. Sibree gives a very interesting and pic- turesque description both of the aspect of "the changing year in central Madagascar" and of the agricultural opera- tions of the people. There is an elaborate and complete system of irrigation which turns the whole of the great "granary" of Antananarivo into a vast water-meadow. This arrangement naturally produces very striking changes from time to time in the general aspect of the district. Thus "in January those portions of the great rice-plain which lie north- west of the capital become golden-yellow in hue, and after a few days patches of water-covered field may be noticed in different places, showing where the crop has been cut, and the few inches of water in which it was growing show con- spicuously in the prospect. As the weeks advance, this water-covered area extends over larger portions of the rice- plain until the whole of the early crop has been gathered in, so that in many directions there appear to be extensive sheets
of water As there are channels to conduct water to every rice-field, small canoes are largely used to bring the rice, both before and after it has been threshed, to the margin of the higher grounds and nearer to the roads." At a village to which reference had been made, "which is like a large island surrounded by a sea of rice-plain, there is one point where a number of these channels meet and form quite a port; and a very animated scene it presents at harvest time as canoe after canoe, piled up with heaps of rice in the husk, or with sheaves of it still unthreshed, comes up to the landing-place to discharge its cargo." That is a very attractive sketch, and many of the villages of the central province, we are told, are decidedly pretty and picturesque, especially at a distance. When the European enters them there must be many trials to the nose as well as to the eyes, judging from Mr. Sibree's account of the entire indifference of the inhabitants to sanitary considerations. The Royal], indeed, who inhabit the central province, and who, of course, are the dominant tribe, though, strangely enough, not physically so powerful as the Basile°, whom they vanquished and displaced, do not practise certain extremely unhealthy as well as, to our notions, peculiarly revolting funeral customs, which are described as prevailing widely among the other tribes in the island, and which are apparently connected with a belief in transmigration. But they have, or lately had, a most peculiar and quite sufficiently insanitary ceremony "which they call mamadika (literally, turning-over'), and which con- sists in going to their tombs to turn the corpses on one side, so that they may not be fatigued by remaining too long in one position. This ceremony is usually observed daring the year following the death of one of the members of the family. This is a time of feasting and rejoicing." But, shortly adds Mr. Sibree, " many of these customs, although practised until the last few years, are completely disappearing under the influences of civilisation and Christianity." The sentence just quoted is an example of the im- pressive incidental testimony which this book bears to the wide-reaching results of the work of the agents of "civilisation and Christianity," who, of course, have been the English missionaries. Few things are more difficult to change than funeral customs, as our own experience shows, and if the conservatism of the Hovas has yielded in such matters, we could hardly have better evidence of the bold which their English teachers have obtained. Towards the end of the chapter on Imarina, already referred to, we find the remark that " in almost all the larger villages " of that province "there is now to be seen a building for Christian worship." In many places it is only a rude and plain structure, but in many others, and particularly near the capital, " very neat and pretty village churches are now to be
seen showing that the people have worked hard and done their best to make a building that shall be suitable for the worship of God." And " besides being used for Divine Service on Sundays, the village church is also the school. house on week-days. Here may be seen bright children repeating their a, b, d (not c), reading and writing, doing sums, learning a little grammar and geography, and being taught their Catechism and something about the chief facts and truths of the Bible." Antananarivo is a great centre of religious and educational activity. There, as indeed in many other Madagascar towns and villages, Sunday is reverently observed. There are actually twenty-seven town and suburban churches, together with schools and a college in the capital, belonging to the London Missionary Society, which body has three hundred congregations in the central province. The chief glory of Christianising and civilising the Hovas un- doubtedly falls to that Society, with which the Friends' Mission works in intimate association. Other societies, indeed, are doing vigorous work, but on a very much smaller scale. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel has four churches in Antananarivo, including a stately stone cathedral. The Jesuit Mission has the same number of churches, and the French Protestants have lately built a church " under the auspices of the French Resident- General." These numbers are enough to show how completely it is an English, and for the most part a distinctly Protestant, work upon the possession of which France has entered. It is our missionaries, and especially those of the London Missionary Society, which forty years ago despatched artisans as well as evangelists to Madagascar, who have brought about the great moral and material elevation of the ruling native race of that island. It was sad enough that the lines of progress thus marked out should be disturbed as they were by the French occupation. But it is sadder still that the French do not seem able, without efforts which the Government of the Republic do not care to face, to make their occupation effective, that all authority in the central province has to a large extent broken down, and that many of the Hovas are relapsing into heathenism and barbarism. In this most sorrowful issue of the operation of two diverse streams of European influence upon an interesting and very promising native race, Englishmen and Frenchmen of all creeds must see abundant cause for deep regret.
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