Thirty years in Madagascar

by Thomas T. Matthews

Shortly after this he was drafted into the army, in which he had to serve down to 1876 without a penny of pay, and having many a pound to pay to his officers; for under the Hova régime, the officers lived mainly by blackmailing their men and by loot; hence tribal wars were very popular, as they were simply plundering expeditions. His father died the year he was drafted into the army, and in those days a funeral was a very expensive affair indeed to relatives, so that it was a time of trouble to him; but, notwithstanding his troubles, he was the means of leading many to the Lord, of comforting and supporting others, and of building others up in the faith.

The idol-keepers were continually at war with him, as he refused to honour the gods of the ancestors, and even denounced them, and as the land was full of idols and idol-keepers then, he was heartily hated by all who had vested interests in that class of property. He was regarded as ‘a setter forth of strange doctrines,’ a man who was bent upon ruining his country by uprooting the religion of his forefathers. Such was the hatred of the heathen party to him, that the wonder is they did not make an attempt on his life. His wife was taken from him by her heathen parents, and he was watched and followed when he left his hut at night to visit some of the converts, or to go to one of their midnight gatherings for prayer, as it was thought that he went out during the night to rifle the tombs—a heinous crime in Madagascar, and held worthy of death. Treasures were often buried with the dead, and parties caught in the act in pursuit of them were summarily dealt with. Many a night, as he learned afterwards, did his enemies lie behind the tombs, with their spears ready to transfix him if he had approached them, even if only to take a seat, as it would have been taken for granted that he did so for no good purpose. One night, while he and a few others were having a midnight gathering for prayer, and he was offering prayer, a stone was flung into the hut, which struck his eldest son on the head, and laid him bleeding and senseless on the floor. When the father ceased praying, and a light was procured, he found his son lying seemingly dead, but he had only fainted.

In the year 1849 the persecution became much more severe, and on March 28 of that year, Razàka, along with many others, was sold into slavery, because he was a noted leader among the ‘prayers.’ As he was purchased by some of his relatives, his case was not so hard as that of many others. Some who had made profession of Christianity were found faithless when the hour of trial came; but he and many others stood firm to their faith. The converts in Vònizòngo and the neighbourhood, who had proved faithful, still met in his hut in Fìhàonana for their midnight prayer-meetings, and for the reading of the Scriptures.

Razàka and his wife were among the first of the converts from Vònizòngo who were baptized after the persecution began. They were baptized at a midnight prayer-meeting in the house of Rafàravàvy one very dark night, while the rain descended in torrents, the lightning flashed, and the thunder roared. Her house was at Imarìvolànitra, near to the spot on which the London Missionary Society printing-office now stands, and within gunshot of the palace. It would have been death to the whole party if they had been discovered In 1850 they were received into church fellowship, and for the first time partook of the Lord’s Supper; and from that time Razàka became a more prominent member than ever of the persecuted band of Christians, with whose lives and fortunes the future of the Church of Christ in Madagascar was bound up.

Razàka became so noted among the ‘prayers’ in Vònizòngo, that the queen sent officers to arrest him and bring him to the capital. He had notice of their coming, and escaped. He got back to Fìhàonana one dark night and into the cave. He was able to let his wife know that he was there, and she took him food during the night. He lay hidden in that cave—the small-pox hospital—for two years, his wife taking his food to him during the night. He lay near the mouth of the cave during the day reading and re-reading the Bible—which was hidden there—until he seemed to have got the whole book by heart. As he was thus out of sight for two years, it was thought that he had escaped to the Sàkalàvas, and been murdered by them as a Hova spy; and so search for him was given up. Afterwards, in order to keep him and a few others of the more prominent ‘prayers’ in Vònizòngo out of danger, Prince Rakòto Radàma (afterwards Radàma II) sent Razàka and other five down to Bàly on the west coast, under the pretence of seeing what the French priests were doing there; but really to get them out of danger, in case their zeal for the propagation of the faith might attract the notice of the queen, and cost them their lives.

They started for Bàly on July 4, 1854, suffered great privations on the way—were four days and nights without water, four of their number going mad in consequence—and after all they never reached Bàly; for they were seized by the Sàkalàvas as Hova spies, tied up, and taken to the large Sàkalàva town of Namòroka. The old mode of tying up prisoners, with small cords twisted round their wrists, was a most painful and cruel method; and the cords were twisted more tightly round Razàka’s wrists, until they cut into the flesh, as a sort of honour, he being treated—as he really was—as the leader of the party. Shortly after being caught they were sold as slaves to some Arabs, who, in their turn, sold them to a French trader, who carried them to Nòsibè, where they arrived on September 25, 1854.

At Nòsibè they found a Jesuit priest, who had been in Antanànarìvo, and to him Razàka wrote, asking him to buy them, which he ultimately did. He knew they were Protestants, but he probably hoped by freeing 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 religion. At this the Jesuit was wrathful. He first tried to win them over, then he tried threatening them, and at last he sent them as slaves to Réunion. Their case was very pitiable—strangers in a strange land, free men and yet treated as slaves. No doubt they would have fared far better if they would have consented to change their religion and become Roman Catholics; but they set their faces like flint against doing so, and they had to suffer for it. On March 5, 1855, they were put on board ship to be taken to Réunion, which they reached on April 1. The scenes that Razàka witnessed on board the slave-ship and at Nòsibè dare not be described.

At Réunion the Jesuits tried hard to persuade Razàka to marry one of their Catholic girls; but he refused, as he said he had a wife in Madagascar. They said: ‘Very likely she has gone all wrong by this time, or, regarding you as dead, has married some one else.’ He answered that he did not think that probable; but in any case he would wait to see before taking another wife. They wanted to rebaptize him. He told them he had been baptized, but if it was likely to do him any good, he had no objection to being done again. They said his Protestant baptism was of no avail, as it had not been performed by a priest. He asked in whose name they baptized, and they replied, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He said: ‘It was in Their name that I was baptized, and I don’t see that being baptized again in Their name will do me any good’; and so he refused to submit to a second baptism.

When they found that they could make nothing of him, and there was a danger of his even turning some they had from the Roman Catholic faith, their treatment of him changed. As he knew his Bible well, had a good memory, and the gift of exposition, when he and the others were shut up in the dormitory at night, he used to recount to them the stories of the Old Testament, and the parables of the New, repeat and explain the meaning of hundreds of verses in the Gospels and the Epistles, until the faith of the listeners in the teaching of the Jesuits began to be greatly shaken. When this was discovered, the anger of the Jesuits knew no bounds; and, as they had no hope of ever being able to make a convert of him, they determined to get rid of him and his companion. On learning this, Razàka and his friend begged to be sent to Mauritius, to be sold to the Rev. Mr. Le Brun, the Protestant missionary, afterwards pastor there; but they would not do that. ‘No,’ they said, ‘we shall send you back to Madagascar, you ungrateful creatures.’

Accordingly, on March 20, 1856, the two were shipped off to the Island of St. Mary’s, which they reached after a voyage of three days, and from there they got over to the mainland, and started up country for home, where, after having been away nearly two years, they arrived on April 7, much to the surprise and joy of their wives, children, and companions.