Thirty years in Madagascar

Madagascar is the third largest island in the world, about 1,000 miles long, by 375 at its widest part, with an average breadth of about 250 miles. It has an area of about 230,0...

The edict of Queen Rànavàlona I against the Christian religion was published on March 1, 1835. To effect a return to absolute heathenism at all costs was the settled policy of t...

‘The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.’--ISAIAH ix. 2.

On Friday, August 6, there was a meeting of the Imèrina District Committee, that is, the committee of management for all London Missionary Society affairs in Imèrina. I laid my...

From the first I had to give a good deal of medical advice to my people, and my work in that direction increased so rapidly that, finally, I had to confine medical work to one d...

Our enforced sojourn in the capital for the first four months of the year 1872, while in some respects a privation, afforded me more time to work at the language. I was also abl...

So much for the dark and sad side; now for a word about the sunny and cheerful side of the work. One Sabbath morning, while examining the members of the church of Ambòhitràzo, a...

The year 1875 was by far the best since we came, in work done and progress made, in schools established, in money raised, in enlarged congregations, and in the fewness of scanda...

‘And they shall not teach every man his fellow-citizen, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know Me, from the least to the greatest of them.’--HEBREW...

In former times the Malagasy used to hold great feasts, rum-drinking and horrible orgies at the funerals of all people of any consequence. The corpse was rolled in a silk _làmba...

The schools occupied much of my time and attention. I was convinced that in no other way could I better serve the objects of the mission in Madagascar. The foundation for someth...

An embassy was sent by the British government to Madagascar in the summer of 1880. The late Admiral Gore-Jones and his staff went up to the capital and spent some time there in...

‘In the latter days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and p...

them to make Romanists of them, and to be able to make good use of a man like Razàka. In this he was disappointed, for Razàka and one of his companions refused to change their r...

I was sent to visit the Bètsilèo Mission, a hundred miles to the south of Antanànarìvo, during 1885. I was away for seven weeks, and returned rather exhausted, for I was worked...

The following extracts from the _Ten Years’ Review_ of the Madagascar Mission, 1891–1900, published by the London Missionary Society, will show the steps which led up to the con...

Naturally the French regarded the rising against their rule as rebellion. It was very foolish of the Malagasy to rise against the French rule under the circumstances, but in the...

The French Protestants took a great interest in our work, and rose to the occasion, and came to the rescue of Protestantism in Madagascar in a noble way. The interest in foreign...

‘The whole administration of the island has now been completely organized, and that of course on French principles. What strikes an Englishman as strange in this administration...