Thirty Years in Madagascar
9781465677105
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Madagascar is the third largest island in the world, about 1,000 miles long, by 375 at its widest part, with an average breadth of about 250 miles. It has an area of about 230,000 square miles, so that it is almost four times the size of England and Wales, or two and a half times that of Great Britain and Ireland, or seven times the size of Scotland! This important island is situated in the Indian Ocean, and separated from the east coast of Africa by the Mozambique Channel, which is some 250 miles broad. It lies between latitude 12° 2’ to 25° 18’ south of the line, and longitude 44° to 50° east of Greenwich, about 550 miles to the north-west of the island of Mauritius—the far-famed ‘key of the Indian Ocean’—some 950 miles to the north-east of Port Natal, and 750 to the south-east of Zanzibar. ‘Although visited by Europeans only within the last 400 years, Madagascar has been known to the Arabs for many centuries, probably a thousand years at least, and also, although perhaps not for so long a time, to the Indian traders of Cutch and Bombay.’ Moreover, some of the great classical writers of Greece and Rome, such as Aristotle, Pliny (the elder), and Ptolemy, seem to have heard of Madagascar; though until a few years ago this had escaped notice, owing to the fact that the island was known to them by different names. There is perhaps some ground for supposing that the Jews may have known of Madagascar, and that the sailors of Solomon, in their voyages in the ‘ships of Tarshish,’ may have visited that island. ‘Ages before the Arabian intercourse with Madagascar, it is highly probable that the bold Phoenician traders’ ventured as far to the south, or at least obtained information about this great island. The fact that the Ophir of Scripture, from which came the famous ‘gold,’ is now believed by most high authorities to have been on the east coast of Africa, renders it highly probable that these ‘ships of Tarshish,’ with Solomon’s sailors on board, may have visited Madagascar. If so, it is easy to account for the close resemblance between certain Malagasy and Jewish customs, such as the scape-goat and the sprinkling of blood, or rather their practice of soaking a piece of bulrush in the blood of the bullock killed at the annual festival of the Fàndròana, i. e. ‘the bath,’ and placing it above the lintel of the door of the hut for its sanctification and protection from evil influences. The killing of a bullock at the annual festival of the Fàndròana seems to suggest some slight connexion with the Jewish sacrifice of a bullock on the day of Atonement. Quarrels were made up, and binding engagements entered into, over the body of a slain animal. The Jewish forms of marriage, the practice of levirate marriage, the Jewish law as to bankruptcy, under which the bankrupt and his wife and family were sold into slavery for the behoof of his creditors—there is a Malagasy proverb which says: ‘Pretentious, like a slave of Hova parentage’—and other usages seem all to point in the direction of Jewish influences.
