Thirty years in Madagascar

by Thomas T. Matthews

The province of Vònizòngo, being about forty miles to the north-west of the capital, having no governor, and very few government officials, became a hiding-place for many of the persecuted Christians. Midnight prayer-meetings were held there for years—first in the house of Ràmitràha, who was afterwards burned at Fàravòhitra, and afterwards in the house of Razàka. The converts travelled twenty, thirty, and even forty miles to attend those meetings. At Fìhàonana they had one of the few Bibles that had been saved. This was a well in the desert, for the ‘Word of God was precious in those days.’ The converts met and spent the night in reading the Scriptures and prayer; and on the very dark nights of the rainy season they ventured on singing a hymn to refresh their weary hearts and souls, trusting the noise of the falling rain would drown their voices, as it might well do. On such nights the queen’s spies did not venture abroad.

Many of the persecuted fled from the capital and other parts to Vònizòngo, and hid there for months, and some for years. The rice-pits under the floors of the huts were favourite hiding-places, while refuge was also found among the rocks, in ravines on the hill-sides, and in the ‘cave,’ used as a small-pox hospital. Some of the rice-pits had underground passages connecting them with pits in the neighbouring huts, from which a passage led to the outside, so that if any in hiding in the first rice-pit were searched for, they could crawl into the pit in the adjoining hut, and thence find their way outside.

On one occasion Rafàravàvy Marìa, who afterwards escaped from the island and was brought to England, was in hiding in a hut in Vònizòngo, when an officer sent to search for her arrived in the village. He had come so suddenly that she had not had time to get into the rice-pit or outside into the fosse; she had barely time to crawl under a low wooden bedstead, and the woman of the house had only time to draw the mat on the bed down in front of it to hide her. She put some baskets with rice and manioc on the bedstead, to keep the mat from slipping down, when the officer entered the hut. He said: ‘Have you Rafàravàvy here?’ The woman of the house answered: ‘Look and see.’ He just looked round the hut, did not look under the bedstead, and went away. When he left the village to seek for her elsewhere Rafàravàvy escaped to a place of safety.

When very strict search was made by the queen’s orders for Bibles and other Christian books—for she more than suspected that they had not all been given up—the Christians in Vònizòngo were very much afraid they might lose their copy of the Scriptures. They said: ‘If we lose our Bible what shall we do?’ A consultation was held as to how and where the Bible was to be hidden to ensure its safety; and it was agreed that the best and safest place in which to hide the Bible was the small-pox hospital. The officers dreaded small-pox too much to venture there.

A little to the north-east of the village of Fihàonana a hill rises, and near the foot of it stands a cluster of large boulders. Inside that cluster, during the lulls in the persecution, from ten to thirty of the converts used to hold a Sabbath morning service. Underneath one of the largest of the boulders, at the foot of the hill, there is an artificial cave, dug out by the people to serve as a small-pox hospital for the village: in the dark corner of this cave the Bible was hidden between two slabs of granite. The queen’s officers arrived at the village, as it was expected they would, to search for the Bible and other Christian books, which the queen and government had reason to believe, from the reports of spies, were to be found there. A bootless search was made in the huts of the suspected, in the rice-pits, and in the village fosse; and then the officers directed their way to the cluster of boulders on the hill-side. As they were about to enter the cave where the Bible lay, some one said: ‘I suppose you know that this is the small-pox hospital?’ ‘We did not,’ they said, starting back in horror. ‘Wretch! why did you not tell us sooner? Why did you let us come so near?’ The officers beat a hasty retreat, and the Bible was safe. This particular copy is now, and for many years has been, in the library of the British and Foreign Bible Society, Queen Victoria Street, London.

Razàka lay for over two years in hiding in that cave, and during that time he seemed to have learnt most of the Bible by heart. After the martyrdom of Ràmitràha the queen had sent to have him arrested as the ringleader of the ‘prayers’ in Vònizòngo. Had he been caught, he would have been put to death. He had before that been sold into slavery for his religion; but, as a distant relative bought him, his slavery was of a mild type. He heard that the officers had been sent out to arrest him, and went into hiding. A report was spread that he had escaped to the Sàkalàva tribe in the west, and the search was given up.

THE MARTYRDOMS AT AMPAMARINANA.

(From a Native Sketch.)

On a dark night he returned to the cave, and there began his long concealment of two years. At night his wife took him rice; in the daytime, when it was safe, he lay at the mouth of the cave and read and re-read the Bible. How many times he read it through I do not know, but I do know that he had the most extraordinary knowledge of the Scriptures of any man I have met. This qualified him for the honour afterwards conferred upon him of becoming native pastor of the mother-church at Fihàonana and the Apostle of the Vònizòngo district.