was chosen King of all the Malagasy, the people protesting that in him one of their old chiefs had come to life again. The French did not like this; so they stirred up strife in which Benyowsky was killed. The Malagasy might well reverence him, for most of the white men whom they had to do with were by no means loveable characters. Our own Robert Drury, son of a London tavern-keeper, was no better than the French and Portuguese, who vied with one another, and with the Arabs from the Comoros, in behaving as "pioneers of civilisation" usually do. Drury had run away to sea, and his ship was wrecked in 1702 on the south-east of the island. The crew were saved, and were so kindly treated that they thought they were being fattened up for the slave-market. They therefore turned on their kind hosts, and, seizing the chief and several more as hostages, entrenched themselves. But they had no food or water, and at last only Drury and two or three more were left. He was made a slave of, and by-and-by escaped to the coast, having had no illtreatment to complain of, except once when he refused to join in prayer to his master's idols. Coming home he wrote a book denouncing slavery and idolatry; but in a few years he sailed back, and himself became an eager slave-dealer. Early in this century the principal chief of the Hovas, getting, perhaps, from some trader a confused account of what Bonaparte had done, united the twelve Hova clans, got himself appointed King by the name of Radama the First, began bringing the other tribes under Hova rule, and made a treaty with England with the view of driving the French out of the island. He made an English officer, Brady, his commander-in-chief, and his merciless campaigns against the Betsileo, and other tribes, reduced the population so much that it is still considerably less than when this "mighty conqueror" came to the throne. Brady, too, had a Tarquin's ideas of pacifying a tribe. "Kill all the young men," he said to his army, as it was marching south. "How high must they have grown to be worth killing?" Brady stretched out his arm, meaning that no one should escape who could not pass under it. As he was a short man, the slaughter was terrible. The Betsileo soon submitted, so did most of the other tribes, the Sakalava "long-cats" alone making much resistance. When Radama was dead, his wife succeeded as Ranavalona the First. She still further diminished the population by her wholesale religious persecutions. The rock over which the Christians were flung makes one think of the Pappenberg, as the Dutch nicknamed the mountain over which the Japanese Christians were hurled. But Christianity was leavening the whole lump; and when Ranavalona died, and persecution ceased, it grew so strong that within eight years the national idols, or rather fetishes, were publicly burnt. What these idols were is not certainly known, for nobody was allowed to look inside the boxes, about a foot long, in which they were kept. When brought out, each box, covered with red cloth, and decked with silver charms, silver balls, pieces of coral, and ornaments shaped like shark's teeth, was fastened to a long pole, and carried under a velvet canopy. Though wonderfully constant under persecution, the Hova Christian is not of a very high type. Mr. Little, a missionary, whose book is full of interesting facts about hitherto unknown parts of the island, laments their bumptiousness, and greed, and lack of self-denial. Their teachers, he says, ought to be more frank with them about the necessity for thoroughness and plodding. The white man's example has seldom been edifying. Fancy a steamer, having on board a mixed cargo of missionaries, Bibles, and Mauritius rum-the most poisonous spirit ever distilled! The late Queen tried to keep out a poison which was undermining the health of her subjects; but the spirit-merchants are a powerful body, and our Government says: "You shall not keep out Mauritius rum," just as in China it has said, "You shall not keep out Indian opium.' The prime minister, Rainilaiarivony, husband of the present as he was of the late Queen, complains grievously; and well he may, when it is, says Mr. Little, no uncommon thing to find a whole village drunk with toaka (rum). Wages are paid in rum; rum buys the bullocks that are sent by the shipload to the Mauritius. The late Queen was most anxious that our Queen, "her sister," should herself order the English to abstain from this unholy traffic; but, of course, as her Majesty reigns but does not govern, nothing so subversive of the British Constitution as such interference could be attempted. Like many other nations, savage and civilised, the Hovas do not allow a foreigner to buy freehold land. He may take a life- lease, but no more. fairly useful harmonium, and try his hand at a violin-nay, he sets up as a watchmaker, and is offended if you send your timepiece to Mauritius to be cleaned. Mr. Little, anxious to encourage native skill, had two valuable chronometers a Hova workman. Nor do the wilder tribes care for steady work. When a Sakalava, or a Tanala, or a Bara has earned a few dollars, he beats them out flat, and nails them on to his gunstock, or else he cuts them up to make beads for his sweetheart's neck, or else the little silver oxen that are stuck all over her chignon. The cry, therefore, among the white settlers is, "Send us East Indian coolies." The late French consul, Laborde, had a coffee estate granted him by Radama the Second; he understood it as a gift out and out, and left it to his heir. But the Government stepped in and said: "No; the land is ours. The late consul had only the right of occupation." The heir insisted," ruined with the best intentions" by and was supported by the new French consul. This was in 1880; and there were pleadings and counter-pleadings, till at last, in June, 1883, the French tried the lex ultima regum, as war is called in the inscriptions on old cannon. How will it end? Radama the First, who hated the French, said he wasn't afraid of them, for he had two generals-Tazo (the fever) and Hazo (the forest) who could keep any number of white men at bay. But since then the irrepressible white man has bearded Tazo, and shorn Hazo's locks to such a degree, that already a forest conservancy is needed. The fever is, however, a terrible affair, not only in itself but in its after-results; and the thirst of gain must be very strong to risk the utter prostration and total wreck of the system which often follow an attack. The uplands and great central forests are tolerably healthy, but crops pay best on the belt of rich seaboard, and labour-chiefly imported-is most easily got there. So the European "boss" fixes himself where even the Hova garrisons sicken and die, and where the sailor's nicknames, "Dead Island," "Churchyard," "Frenchmen's grave," show what is the character of the climate. If he never tastes spirits, and uses the tepid herb bath, which is the native remedy, and never stirs out, even for a few minutes, without a helmet and thick two-fold umbrella, he may have the disease in a mild form; but in some form or other he is bound to have it. Nor does it attack the planter and factory-clerk only; the temperance and self-devotion of the missionary cannot save him. The saddest picture in Mr. Little's book is that of a fever-stricken missionary, dying on a strawtruss, forgotten by the crew, on board one of those Mauritius bullock ships-condemned hulks, with no Plimsoll to look after them the voyage on which is the worst of purgatories even to a man in rude health. I said just now "imported labour," for the native does not yet see the duty of working steadily in order that the white man may make a big pile. The Hova has altogether too good an opinion of himself to turn day-labourer; he will make you a If I were autocrat of inter- tropical Africa, I would organise a series of slave - merchant hunts, drafting off the fellows as I caught them to work in the Madagascar fever districts, not at sugar-growing, but at clearing away the river-bars, cutting drains, planting blue gum-trees, and otherwise sanitating. In this way the Madagascar seaboard would, in time, become fairly healthy; and the work is not by any means so hopeless as it is along some of the West African coasts, for instance. There is not much of that mangrove swamp which must be the despair of sanitary engineers; a great deal of the deadliest country in Madagascar is beautiful and park-like, with lovely freshwater lakes separated, some by only a few feet, others by four or five miles, from the Indian Ocean. Radama the First planned a canal uniting them all, and gathered a host of diggers, who were not to go back to their villages till the work was done. But popular feeling was too strong even for him. One day the workmen stood aghast; blood oozed out of the trench that they were digging, and cries issued from the ground; the gods were clearly saying "No," and therefore the canal was abandoned. With such a regiment as I have suggested, and with determined "bosses to keep them up to their work, I would soon sanitate that deadly coast, and I would have a railway and a telegraph, and free trade in everything except ardent spirits. It is sad to think of the Malagasy being killed out by drink, for they are (Hovas most of all) a kindly folk, and as ceremonious as the Samoans, with whom their speech identifies them. They are as fond of "perhaps," as a Cornishman is of "perhaps so," or a Scot of "aiblins," and their the Arab gets to the place from which he lured him, he calls on his parents, and, with a blandly sympathetic voice, says, as he slips a dollar into the mother's hand, "Poor fellow! he would bathe, though I often warned him, and at last the crocodile got him;" or else he invents an upset of the "dug-out," or an attack of fever. Slaves are kindly treated. If they have a trade, they can work on their own account, pay courtesy at times becomes oppressive, as when passing a man in a narrow road (and roads are a weak point even close to the capital) you cannot escape without a whole set of enquiries about your health, and of hopes, not only for your success in your present journey, but for your long life and decent burial. And it is such a soft, allvowels-speech, like the music that the Pacific on a calm day makes on a coral reef, that there is no wonder the Malagasy finding a share to their masters; nay, they are it hard to give up their names and take Scripture ones. What pretty girl would not rather be called Totósy (mouse), or even Mamba (crocodile), than Sarah Anne or Keziah? The result is a compromise; one finds Ra-Caleb, or Ra-Mary, like that Sandwich island chief, whom his friends wanted to christen "Darer of devils in the dark," while the missionaries insisted on calling him Jeremiah, and who, to satisfy both, was called "Jeremiah in the dark." If the speech is Polynesian, so is the taboo (called here "fady"); and there is the same abstinence from certain meats by certain families. One clan must not eat beef, another is forbidden to eat manioc, and so on, "totemism" being at the bottom of the restrictions, the forbidden thing being the sacred emblem or great ancestor of the abstaining clan. trusted to travel in search of work from one end of the island to the other, it being understood that they will send back their quota, or bring it with them on their return. I should like to see one of the great central forests, with its magnificent camphor-wood, rosewood, ebony, and other hard woods; its indiarubber creepers, and its orchids, some of which bring ninety pounds a plant in the English market. The wild cat; a dog with extra-strong fore-claws and contracting pupils, as if it were developing into a creature of the cat tribe; the mythical songom, as big as a donkey, and spotted with red; lemurs of various sorts; a spider with so strong a web that birds are caught in it; hedgehogs; big tortoises; snakes, some perfectly white, but none venomous; very few birds; butterflies the finest in the world; but none of the tzetze, or other African flies-that is a catalogue of the chief living things. As in New Zealand, the silence of the Madagascar "bush" is painfulthere is no hum of insects, no note of feathered songsters. But, then, you are safe; there is no venomous creature, except the foka, a small spider, for the few scorpions and centipedes (probably imported) are not very dangerous. Painting there is plenty of among the wilder tribes. A Bara belle touches up her eyebrows with chalk, and on great occasions whitens her whole face, leaving only nose and eyelids their natural colour. Human sacrifices were given up when European (especially English) influences penetrated deeply, under Radama the First. "The covenant of blood" (a Dyak | custom also) still exists. You and I just prick the skin near our hearts, and drink a drop of one another's blood; thenceforth we are more than brothers. Of cannibalism there is no trace; indeed, on the whole, the people are very gentle. Slavery is very general, slaves being usually debtors or purchased foreigners. A good deal of kidnapping, however, is carried on in the island itself by Comoro Arabs. A trader hires a servant-lad for a rice-gathering tour up one of the big rivers. All goes well until they get into a new tribe, and there the Arab immediately puts the lad up for sale. He appeals to the village They say every race that comes in conheadman, saying he is no slave, but a hired tact with civilisation must run the gauntlet servant; but, as slaves generally talk in of the old diseases. It was so in Fiji, that way when masters want to sell them where two-thirds of the population died of away from home, the headman seldom measles brought from Sydney by Cacobau's interferes. The boy is sold, and next time | suite, where that monarch had foolishly Free from fever, the uplands were no safeguard against smallpox, imported nine years ago from Mauritius in a cargo of cast-off uniforms. Mr. Little knows something of medicine, as every missionary should, and he vaccinated hundreds a day with a steel pen for lancet. But the ravages of the disease were dreadful – whole villages were depopulated; the dead were left unburied; the sick were driven out to the forest with a bag of rice and a gourd of water, and, if they ventured back, were stoned off by parents or children. race. gone to see the world. Sometimes the new disease wholly kills out the unseasoned Some Red Indian tribes have gone in this way. Let us hope the Malagasy and the Fijians, thinned out though they have been, may survive. No one wants the royal burial customs to survive. The late Queen, dying in the midst of the troubles with France, was buried very quietly. Even had there been peace, she would certainly not have been buried like her cousin Rasoherina, the last heathen Queen, in 1868, when the ceremonies were as magnificent in their way as those wherewith the Crim Tartar Kings used to be entombed. The coffin was made of twentytwo thousand silver dollars; a chest containing eleven thousand more was placed in the vault, in which were also laid a side-saddle, two chests-of-drawers, several lamps, a papier-maché work-table, a large armchair, and more than two hundred dresses of silk, satin, and velvet, while three thousand bullocks were divided amongst the mourners. This was doing things in a style that will never be repeated. But a royal funeral is still a serious affair. Men and women have to shave their heads, as in Tahiti; and all wear sad-coloured raiment. Funeral rites for common folks are kept up among outlying heathen tribes. The sasy, or funeral dirge of the Sihanaka, a tribe living north-west of Lake Alaotra, reminds one of the South Sea Island and New Zealand dirges. The dead are "the lost," whom some hard-hearted power has seized as with the grip of a crocodile. Oh, distressed and sad are the many; Oh, scattered are the calves; Oh, weed-grown is the plantation; Oh, weeping are the children; Oh, gone, gone away is the gentle, pleasant one! I am sorry to say that a deal of toaka (rum) drinking has been added to the spearing of oxen, which forms part of the ceremony. The heads of the slain oxen are placed on poles round the house, as the Dyaks place human heads. The widow is dressed up in a bright scarlet lamba (mantle), wearing all her beads, and silver chains, and other ornaments. She is placed where everyone can see her, that all may judge how her husband adorned her; and while the rest have gone to the grave, she sits in solitary state. The moment they come back they all fall upon her, tearing her dress, pulling off her ornaments, and crying: "This is the cause of our not having our own." The belief is that her luck, being stronger than her husband's, has caused his death. Then they fling her a coarse palm-fibre mantle, a broken spoon and dish, and cover her up with a coarse mat, under which she remains all day, not being allowed to speak, whoever may come into the house. She must only move out at night, and must not wash, except her finger-tips. In this uncomfortable state she is kept for a year as strictly as if she were a Red Indian widow. The spirits of the departed are thought to have a good deal of power over the daily life of the survivors. In time of sickness oxen are sacrificed at the forefathers' graves; and you scarcely ever pass a grave among these outlying tribes without seeing the headstone freshly oiled and wrapped in a new lamba (mantle). A strange place is the Hova capital, with its vast palaces, built with forced labour, its pleasant European houses and its native huts. One sign of progress is the stone called "the Hovas' weeping-place," set up at the point where the sea comes in sight on the way to the coast. Here the Malagasy slaves on their way to exportation used to halt and lament their lot. This traffic is a thing of the past; and the "Mozambiques," too, have been free since 1877, to the annoyance of Malagasy Tories, who did not at all relish "niggers" being put on a footing of social equality with themselves. Well, progress is a grand thing; but I prefer Lake Alaotra as it is, with its eighty square miles of water, two thousand seven hundred feet above the sea level, and the tiny towers on the hills round it, and the herds of cattle, and the dug-outs continually carrying their merry freight to and fro, and the crowds of children laughing as they launch their toy-boats, and, above all, the evening stillness when the herons and divers are out so thick that the shore is quite black with them, to the same lake with a railway-station at each end and a steamer plying between them, and birds and native children frightened off. The only drawback to the lake is the crocodiles. One of his bearers told Mr. Little a ghastly story of a fight between one of these and a wild boar. The boar was wallowing when the crocodile made at him. He at once joined battle, and managed to rip up the saurian's stomach; but the crocodile dies hard, and his jaws kept their hold till he had dragged the boar into deep water and drowned him. Herons and divers and natives will probably disappear before the crocodile does, for he has managed to enlist a small kind of cormorant as sentry. This faithful creature perches on his head or back while he is asleep, and gives a shrill cry the moment danger is at hand. To human creatures the crocodiles (and also the sharks) are dangerous, because the narrow dug-outs (the only means of crossing the rivers) are of such heavy wood that if you get upset your boat sinks and you have to swim for it. WHICH OF THEM? A STORY IN TEN CHAPTERS. CHAPTER IX. ELEVEN o'clock on Friday morning beheld the court of enquiry constituted in the dining-room of Mr. Marston's houseas it still may be called, seeing that it certainly belonged to some Mr. Marston. It consisted simply of Mr. Picton, who sat at the head of the long table, and thoroughly enjoyed himself in his position of judge, One thing makes travelling pleasant-jury, counsel watching the case on behalf every foreigner is a guest of the sovereign, and in even the smallest town there is a "Queen's House" in which he is hospitably entertained, the headman looking after his comforts. I wish I had space to tell about their New Year's customs-the children bringing their mother a present to repay her for having carried them pick-a-back so long; the sovereign, on that day only in strictly native dress, blessing the assembled multitude and sprinkling them with water from a horn of plenty. The French trouble may, possibly, bring about a reaction towards heathenism, as our New Zealand wars gave rise to Hau Hauism. In 1863, when Radama the Second (shortly afterwards assassinated) gave himself wholly up to French influence, the antiforeign feeling became anti-Christian, and showed itself in a dancing mania like those in medieval Europe. Meanwhile the Hovas are very enthusiastic, and talk of introducing the assegai, with which the Zulus did such wonders against British firearms. Let us hope they will be allowed to work out their own civilisation, instead of being taken in hand by European powers. They have plenty of mineral wealth; the bay of Diego Suarez alone contains five of the best harbours in the world; but I, for one, hope their Government will not give way on the question of foreigners owning land, as, till just now, they did on the liquor traffic. Better never "develop their resources"; better go on cutting up dollars for small change, thereby making it needful for every tradesman to carry a pair of money-scales; better even go on with trial by the ordeal of the "poison nut," than let the foreigner come in, and, while drawing to himself all the good of the land, fling to the native the rags and offal of his "culture." That is a civilisation of which the world has seen too many instances. I hope the Malagasy have too much backbone to add one more to the number. of Lucy, clerk of the court, and crier, all rolled into one embodiment of legality. On each side of the table sat one of the rival bridegrooms-Kensington, with an additional shade of gloom on his countenance, and mastering with effort some secret uneasiness, yet self-possessed; Brixton, cross and flurried. After they had taken their seats, there was a minute of awkward silence, while they waited for the arrival of Mr. Wilson. It was broken by the rustling of a dress outside, before the door was opened, and Lucy Marston entered. She was quite calm, though very pale; and she looked strangely older and more dignified than anyone had before seen her, with her white face and heavylidded eyes, and rich sweeping dress of black silk. Her hands were quite bare of rings, but in one she held something concealed. The astonished men rose to receive her, and Kensington sprang forward with an eager greeting. "Lucy, this is a pleasure." She gave him her hand with a quietness which checked him more effectually than a repulse. "Wait, cousin," she said; "I want to speak to Mr. Picton." "I am at your service, Mrs. Marston," answered the lawyer. "Shall I attend you in the drawing room?" "No, thank you; what I have to say can be said before my cousins. I wish to be present at this enquiry, if you will permit me." "Certainly, Mrs. Marston; it is your right, if you do not think it will be too trying to your feelings." "I must control my feelings. I cannot bear to be ignorant of what is going on." "And I must ask you to promise, as these gentlemen have kindly done, to leave the conduct of this enquiry in my hands, and not to interrupt the witnesses. I know it is a hard thing to ask of a lady, but you can say anything that you please to me." Lucy did not realise the magnitude of |