At last, on the ninth morning of our journey, we saw Antanànarìvo (‘the city of a thousand men’—not towns—the full and original form having been Antanànarìvolàhy), the capital of Madagascar, about forty miles away. We reached Ambàtovòry that afternoon, where we found a small European house, with a member of the Friends’ Mission waiting for us. We entered the capital next day. We were met a few miles from it by the members of the London Missionary Society and Friends’ Missions, who all gave us a most warm and hearty reception. We had reached our destination.
Central Madagascar can in no sense be called either picturesque or beautiful. Those who have described the bare plateau and bald hills of Imèrina as beautiful must either have an inaccurate notion of what constitutes beauty of scenery or must have viewed that portion of the island through a highly-coloured medium. As a general rule, not only is the central province of Imèrina without the two main elements of beauty—variety of outline and variety of colour—but the features are rarely so grouped together as to form any distinct or impressive combination. The tangled and almost featureless hills of the lowlands of Scotland afford perhaps the nearest parallel to them that I know; but even they are beauty itself, and picturesque in the extreme, when compared with the characterless hills, dales, and ditches of Imèrina.
It is only fair to say, however, that we saw Central Madagascar for the first time at its worst—in the middle of the cold season, when all is bleak, bare, and desolate-looking. In the early months of the year, after the first rains have fallen, when the young rice is appearing in the rice-fields, and the downs and hill-sides are covered with the fresh dark green grass, it is very different. It was at that season that the lamented Mr. Cameron, the war correspondent of The Standard, saw Central Madagascar in 1884, and although the beautiful little piece of word-painting, in which he tells us how it appeared to him, may seem slightly overdone, it is worth quoting, as the testimony of a man of such shrewdness and world-wide experience to the change that mission work had wrought over the once barbarous Hovas. He says:
‘Antanànarìvo itself was in sight; and we could plainly see the glass windows of the palace glistening in the morning sun on the top of the long hill on which the city is built. It was Sunday, and the people were clustering along the footpaths on their way to church, or sitting on the grass outside waiting for the service to begin, as they do at home. The women, who appeared to be in the majority, wore white cotton gowns, often neatly embroidered, and white, or black and white, striped làmbas thrown gracefully over their shoulders. The men were clad also in cotton—white cotton pantaloons, cotton làmbas, and straw hats with large black silk bands.
‘In the morning sun the play of colours over the landscape was lovely. The dark green hills, studded with the brilliant red-brick houses of the inhabitants, whose white garments dotted the lanes and footpaths, contrasted with the brighter emerald of the rice-fields in the hollows. The soil everywhere is deep red, almost magenta in colour, and where the roads or pathways cross the hills, they shine out as if so many paint-brushes had streaked the country in broad red stripes. Above all, the spires of the strange city, set on the top of its mountain, with a deep blue sky for a background, added to the beauty of the scene. It was difficult to imagine that this peaceful country, with its pretty cottages, its innumerable chapels, whose bells were then calling its people to worship, and its troops of white-robed men and women answering the summons, was the barbarous Madagascar of twenty years ago[27].’
CHAPTER IV
THE MORNING BREAKING
‘Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.’—Isaiah lx. 1.
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 instructions from the Directors of the London Missionary Society on the table, and asked for some one to go with me to Vònizòngo, in order to examine the district and see where it would be best, in the interests of the mission, for me to have my station. For although I was allowed by my instructions to remain for the first year at the capital, if I felt so inclined, and thought it would be of advantage to my work, or for my acquisition of the language, I was very anxious to go at once to my own station and become acquainted as soon as possible with the people for whom I had especially come. Our minds were made up accordingly to go on at all risks.
The Rev. W. E. Cousins, the senior member of the Committee, was asked to accompany me to Vònizòngo, and kindly consented. But before we could start, I was prostrated by another severe attack of sciatica, from which I suffered for four months, and was thus prevented from reaching Vònizòngo at all during 1870, as by the time I was better the rainy season had set in. As it afterwards proved, however, this illness and disappointment were but blessings in disguise.
Early in 1871 we began to make preparations for proceeding to Vònizòngo; but to this the doctors very strongly objected. They said I was quite unfit to face the fever of the west, adding that I little knew to what I was going, and in this they were perfectly right. As, however, we refused to abandon our determination to push on to our station as soon as the season would allow, the doctors ordered us away to the hills near the Great Forest for a month, that we might get somewhat braced up before starting for the west. We were on the hills during the month of April, and on our return to the capital, Mr. Cousins and I set out on a fortnight’s tour in Vònizòngo. We went over the greater part of the district, and everywhere met with a very hearty reception.