The children of Madagascar / by Herbert F. Standing.

  • Herbert Standing
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The children of Madagascar / by Herbert F. Standing. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    by allowing English boys and girls to pay sixpence each to ring it before it was shipped for Madagascar. Here at Farav6hitra live many of the English missionaries, whose houses you may see nestling among the lilacs and gum-trees along the ridge of the hill, or on the slopes to the north and east. That large ornamental red-brick building, exactly opposite where we stand, is the London Missionary Society's College for training evangelists and preachers, and immediately below it, to the right, is the Normal School, where teachers are educated and sent out to all parts of Imerina. Further south still lie other schools—the large Boys' School of the Friends' Foreign Mission Association, and the High School of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. But let us cross over the rice-fields and go up into the town. ' But where is the road ?' you ask. There is no road ; we must cross the muddy rice-field on these little banks of earth which form the boundaries between the rice-plots, and which are so narrow that there is barely room for our carriers to plant their feet without slipping off into the mud. After crossing the rice-fields, we turn up a narrow passage between dilapidated mud walls, and again you will ask 'Is this the road?' Yes ; this narrow path, which serves the double purpose of road and watercourse, being all worn into holes and gullies by the summer torrents, is the main entrance from the east into the northern suburb of the capital. And you will find that, with the exception of one or two tolerably broad highways by which the Queen travels when entering and leaving the town, almost all the roads throughout the city are nothing but rough footpaths. Over many of these it is quite impossible to take even a horse or mule, and in the rainy season they are rendered extremely dangerous by the falling walls and embank- ments, which, loosened by the soaking rains, come down and lie across the path in all directions. And now let us take a stroll along one of the main thoroughfares of the town (or rather, a palanquin-ride, for one does not stroll much over