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 able, while there, to buy most of the wood for our future manse, to get brick-moulds, and agree with a master bricklayer for building it. Many other things were also arranged which it would have been difficult to negotiate from Fìhàonana.
We started back for Vònizòngo in May, and as we thought it would be easier for my wife and the baby to go as far as possible—about halfway—by canoe (along with some friends who were travelling west for a holiday), we adopted this course; but with such results to both, from exposure on the water to the unclouded sun for six hours, that we never repeated the experiment. I had sent the wood for the manse down the river by canoe, and wished to see where it was stored.
At the end of the voyage, we had our first and last real difficulty with the palanquin-bearers during thirty years. After eating all I had provided for them, they coolly told me that as their companions (who were to carry our friends to their destination—a few miles from where we landed) were not going on to Vònizòngo, they declined to keep to their contract and take us there, and demanded prepayment for carrying the empty palanquins from Antanànarìvo. As I refused to accede to their preposterous demands, they took advantage of my absence when seeing after my wood, to set off on their return to the capital, carrying off my palanquin, which they had, however, to return a fortnight later with a humble apology. The leader of this conspiracy I had to encounter and conquer, on our way to the coast in 1879, after which we were good friends.
Fortunately I had sent to Fìhàonana for eight men to meet us, in case porters enough from the capital, willing to go to Vònizòngo, were not to be had. These men had to carry my wife, two children, and the nurse twenty miles. I had to tramp on foot. Four men carried our eldest child and the nurse, took them across the streams and swamps, and then returned for me. Our good friend Mr. Cameron, who was making a trip to Vònizòngo in the interests of geography to take bearings for a map of Madagascar, kindly let my wife have two of his eight bearers, and thus they reached Fìhàonana by sunset, but we did not arrive until nearly ten o’clock; still our reception was well worth all the trouble we had experienced.
On the arrival of my wife and Mr. Cameron at Fìhàonana, they told of the plight in which we had been left. Razàka and the young chief called the men of the village together, and told them how we were placed, and they volunteered to come and meet us, with a supply of torches made of dried grass to light them on their way. We saw the flaring light on the hills miles in front of us, and could not understand what the moving mass of fire marching towards us meant until we came within shouting distance. We were carried into Fìhàonana in right royal style, amid the blaze of torches and the shoutings of the people. The whole village had turned out, and the shouting, hurrahing, and joyous yelling, with the singing and hand-clapping of the women and children with which we were welcomed, was a thing never to be forgotten.
A fine site for the manse was secured on the rising ground to the east of the village of Fìhàonana. A very large village had formerly stood there, and so there was a fosse and embankment round it. The chief and his brother made it over to me, declining any rent. I told them, however, that there must be rent, however nominal, in order that I might make an agreement with the government for it on behalf of the Society, and then they agreed to the nominal sum of four shillings a year. When the agreement came to be signed by the then Hova foreign secretary—a ‘haughty Hova,’ thinly veneered with a profession of Christianity—he took the chiefs to task for allowing me to have such a site so ridiculously cheap. This led to an animated interchange of ideas between him and me. Ultimately it was agreed that the ground-rent should be twelve shillings a year. For that small sum an enclosed site of five acres was secured for forty years to the London Missionary Society. There I built a manse, a large school-house, and a smaller one for girls. Afterwards another dwelling-house and school were erected there. But, alas! in 1897 all that remained of these buildings were seized by the French, and no compensation has ever been paid for them.
With the moulds brought from the capital, I soon taught the people how to make sun-dried bricks. The chiefs and pastors of the district offered to have all the bricks required made for nothing; but having strong views on the subject of slavery, I asked them: ‘Will you hire and pay men to make them or will you simply make your slaves do it?’ Of course they said they would set their slaves to make the bricks, so I felt I must decline their generous offer. At this they seemed astonished and hurt.
My action in this matter was a mistake. I ought to have accepted their proffered aid, and then given their slaves the money afterwards paid for making the bricks, in the form of ‘presents’ wherewith to buy salt and beef, to fit them for their extra work. But we have all to buy our experience.
One morning I sent for the men who professed to be equal to making the bricks I required. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘I want 200,000 bricks (made); how much per thousand will you make them for?’
‘Well,’ they said, ‘you are a good man who has left his home, relatives, and native land to come to teach us.’