According to the same authority, however, satisfactory as is the appearance of the Malagasey soldier, his lot is a very hard one. He receives no pay, and even his regimentals must be provided out of his own scanty means. To meet these expenses he is obliged, if he is a craftsman, to beg so much leave each day of his superior; or, if farm work be his avocation, he on certain days of the week abandons the barrack for the plough. The soldier, however, says Mrs. Pfieffer, who would obtain enough leave of absence to enable him to maintain himself in anything like comfort, must propitiate his captain by giving him part of his earnings. The officers are generally very little richer than the soldiers. They certainly receive, like the civil officials, a remuneration for their services from the customs’ revenues; but the pay is so small that they cannot live upon it, and are compelled to have recourse to other means, not always of the most honest description. According to the law a very small portion of the customs’ revenue should come to the common soldier; but so insignificant is the amount that neither common soldiers nor officers think it worth while to make any fuss about it.
So it comes about that the unlucky Malagasey soldier who can find no work, and is too far from his native village to receive assistance from his friends, is in danger of starvation. His leisure hours are spent in grubbing about the country in search of herbs and roots with which, and a little rice, he manages to keep life and soul together. The rice he throws into a pot filled with water, and after it has soaked for a time the rice-water serves him for a dinner; in the evening he banquets on the soddened grain remaining in the pot. But in war time, as soon as he is on an enemy’s territory, he makes up for his protracted season of “short commons;” he plunders right and left and literally lives upon the fat of the land; his long training has provided him with an excellent appetite; indeed, it is said that four able-bodied Malagaseys are equal to the task of consuming an entire ox in the space of four days, and at the termination of the feast to be so little incommoded as to be able to flee from pursuit with the nimbleness of deer-hounds.
The Malagasey soldier at war, however, is only to be envied while his health remains unimpared, and while he is lucky enough to keep his carcase within a sound skin. His comrades are bound to take care of him in sickness—but how are they to do this when they themselves are pinched by poverty and are without even the common necessaries of life? It frequently happens on a march that the sick soldier’s companions will endeavour to rid themselves of him; not by killing him outright, but by the less charitable process of denying him food to eat or water to quench his thirst, till, preferring death to further torture, he begs to be laid under a tree and left, when his tender nurses readily yield to his solicitations, and he is left to die.
Let us wind up our notice of Royalty and its attributes in Madagascar by a description of a court ball.
The ball began soon after one o’clock in the day, and was not held in the apartments of the palace, but in front of the building, in the great fore-court in which we had been admitted to our audience. As on that former occasion, the queen sat on the balcony under the shade of her great parasol, and we were obliged to make the usual obeisances to her and to the tomb of King Radama. This time, however, we were not made to stand; comfortable arm-chairs were assigned to us. Gradually the ball company began to assemble; the guests comprised nobles of both sexes, officers and their wives, and the queen’s female singers and dancers. The nobles wore various costumes, and the officers appeared in European dress: all were obliged to make numerous obeisances. Those who appeared in costume had seats like ours given them; the rest squatted about as they liked, in groups on the ground.
“The queen’s female dancers opened the ball with the dreary Malagasey dance. These charming creatures were wrapped from top to toe in white simbus, and wore on their heads artificial, or, I should say, very inartificial flowers, standing up stiffly like little flagstaffs; they crowded into a group in such a way that they seemed all tied together. As often as they staggered past the queen’s balcony or the monument of King Radama, they repeated their salutes, and likewise at the end of every separate dance. After the female dancers had retired, the officers executed a very similar dance, only that they kept somewhat quicker time, and their gestures were more animated—that is to say, they lifted their feet rather higher than the performers of the other sex. Those who had hats and caps, waved them in the air from time to time, and set up a sharp howling, intended to represent cries of joy.
“After the officers followed six couples of children in fancy dresses. The boys wore the old Spanish costume, or were attired as pages, and looked tolerably well; but the girls were perfect scarecrows. They wore old-fashioned French costumes—large, stiff petticoats, with short bodices—and their heads were quite loaded with ostrich feathers, flowers, and ribbons. After this little monkey community had performed certain polonaises, schottisches, and contre-danses, acquitting themselves, contrary to my expectation, with considerable skill, they bowed low and retired, making way for a larger company, the males likewise clad in the old Spanish, the females in the old French garb.
“All these various costumes are commanded by the queen, who generally gets her ideas from pictures or engravings that come in her way. The ladies add to the costume prescribed by royalty whatever their own taste and invention may suggest, generally showing great boldness and originality in the combination of colours. I will give my readers an idea of what these costumes are like, by describing one of them.
“The dress was of blue satin, with a border of orange colour, above which ran a broad stripe of bright cherry-coloured satin. The body, also of satin, with long skirt, shone with a brimstone hue, and a light sea green silk shawl was draped above it. The head was covered in such style with stiff, clumsily-made artificial flowers, with ostrich feathers, silk ribbons, glass beads, and all kinds of millinery, that the hair was entirely hidden—not that the fair one lost much thereby, but that I pitied her for the burden she had to carry.
“The costumes of the other ladies showed similar contrasts in colour, and some of these tasteful dresses had been improved by a further stroke of ingenuity, being surmounted by high conical hats, very like those worn by the Tyrolese peasants.