Ida Pfeiffer

“ I do not grudge the queen the treasure she has accumulated; but it would be a fortunate thing for the population of the island if it were to be buried very soon, in company—of course—with its gracious possessor. She is certainly one of the proudest and most cruel women on the face of the earth, and her whole history is a record of bloodshed and deeds of horror. ”

“ The prince was to dine at eight o’clock in the evening with Mr. Lambert, Marius, Laborde, and his son, in the garden-house belonging to the latter, and thither all reports from the other conspirators were to be carried, that it might be known if every thing was progressing favorably, and that every man was at his post. At the conclusion of the dinner, at eleven o’clock at night, the gentlemen were to march home to the upper part of the town, accompanied by music, as if they came from a feast; and each man was to remain quiet in his own house until two o’clock. ”

“ Laborde’s house; its extent was very great, and it consisted of nobles, officers, women, mourning women, and slaves, in large numbers. From the highest to the lowest, all wore their hair loose as a token of mourning; and with this loosened hair they looked so particularly hideous—so horribly ugly—that I had never seen any thing like them among the ugliest races of India and America. The women especially, who let their hair grow longer than the men wear it, might indeed have passed for scarecrows or furies.
In the midst of the procession came the catafalque, borne by more than thirty men. ”

“ It frequently happens that the queen orders hundreds of her subjects to perform the heaviest labor for months together for some favored personage—such work, for instance, as hewing timber for building, and then dragging it thirty miles along the road; hewing stone, and kindred occupations; for all which the poor people get not the slightest reward of any kind. When the prince hears of a case of this kind, he manages to pass by the neighborhood where the people are at work, meets them as if by chance, and asks for whom they are laboring thus. ”

“ With the exception of the care of their own valuable selves, the only thing that can rouse them into life is the agreeable occupation of inventing or disseminating slanderous gossip; and I have even found gentlemen who, in this charitable and exciting amusement, would for a few moments forget the claims of sugar. I did not escape the common fate. The amiable inhabitants, male and female, of Port Louis, have absolutely done me the honor to represent me as a poisoner; they absolutely asserted that I had been hired by the English government to poison Mr. Lambert! ”

“ Every patch of field, every meadow, is, as it were, a little island, surrounded in all directions by canals two or three feet broad.
The part of Holland through which I passed consists principally of marsh land. As far as the eye can reach, it rests upon pastures full of fine-looking cattle, which constitute the chief wealth of the country. In Holland there are about 1,130,000 head of cows, oxen, and calves, to a population of 3,200,000 souls, a proportion to which no other country presents a parallel. No wonder that Holland provides half the world with butter and cheese. ”

“ I begin to fear that every thing will be spoiled by this long delay; the more so, as the meetings are not very cautiously conducted, and a traitor might easily be found among the nobles and officers apparently devoted to the prince. A good deal of the fault may lie with the prince himself. He is, as I have observed, a man of many good and noble qualities, but he wants decision and firmness of purpose; and his affection for the queen is, moreover, so great, that he might lack courage at the decisive moment to undertake any thing against her. ”

“ One finds here, as in Europe, all the titles of rank and nobility, from the prince down to the lieutenant: many of the nobles often go about in European garb; many speak and write English or French, and the rich dine off plate, and possess handsome, well-furnished houses. Farther imitations of our European customs are seen in the etiquette with which the queen surrounds her own person, the ceremonious splendor she seeks to impart to her court, the solemn excursions to her pleasure palaces, the fancy balls, the great dinners, the funerals of high personages, and other occasions of the kind. ”

“ Condemnation and punishment thus often succeed each other so rapidly, that if the prince is absent from the town when sentence is passed, the application to him for assistance is almost sure to come too late.
It is strange, considering how radically different their dispositions are, that mother and son should love each other so tenderly. The prince is devoted to the queen with the utmost affection; he tries to excuse her deeds of severity by every conceivable argument, and it is a bitter reflection to him that she can be neither loved nor respected by the nation. ”

“ But it was not quite so bad as that, though enough was done to make me duly sensible of the enormous difference between my insignificant person and the mighty queen. This overbearing, puffed-up woman seems really to believe herself a sacred being, raised above all the rest of the human race, and appears to think it would derogate from her dignity to permit a stranger to come close to her. ”

“ The best proof that the queen is perfectly well informed of the conspiracy, and only pretends to know nothing about it for the sake of her son, of whom she is very fond, appears in the fact of her having, a few days since, forbidden every one, on pain of death, to make any accusation whatever against the prince, or to impart any surmise of his guilt to her. ”

“ The Queen of Madagascar can easily put herself at the head of a powerful army. Nothing but her potent word is needed to bring it together; for the soldiers receive no pay, and are obliged, moreover, to clothe and feed themselves. They procure provisions by going out to work, with the permission of their superiors; or they go home to cultivate their fields. But the soldier who wants his officer’s permission for frequent absence must propitiate the latter by giving him a part of his earnings—at least a dollar annually. The officers are generally very little richer than the soldiers. ”

“ Lambert and Laborde do not appear to have given up all hope, and consider the contemplated coup d’état as still practicable. I hope with all my heart it may be so—less, I can solemnly assert, because my own life is involved in the question, than for the sake of my numerous brethren in the faith, and for the whole people, who would awake to a new life under the mild rule of Prince Rakoto. But, alas! I can not participate in the hopes of my companions. As things now stand, I can not see the slightest prospect of success. The commander-in-chief of the army is not to be induced to act ”

“ In Madagascar I saw and heard more marvelous things than had come under my notice in any other country; and if little can be said to the advantage of the people, it must be remembered that, under the cruel, insensate rule of Queen Ranavola, and in the entire absence of instruction in religion and morality, no great expectations can reasonably be formed. ”

“ A noble may take a wife not only out of his own caste, but out of the two immediately below him, but never from a higher one. On no account may he marry a slave-woman; and the law does not even allow any other kind of connection between a noble and a slave. In this respect, by the way, Madagascar might serve as a model to those countries governed by white men where slavery exists ”

“ This journey reminded me of similar trips in Singapore and Borneo, with this difference, that in the latter places our way lay through virgin forests of gigantic trees. After a few miles we came to a broader stream, of peculiarly transparent and limpid water, in which every object was reflected with a clearness and brilliancy I had never before seen.
In these lower lands, and, with few exceptions, along the whole coast of Madagascar, the climate is very unhealthy, and dangerous fevers are prevalent. ”

“ Lambert, the powerful friend of the queen; but the difference need not have been quite so glaring. To-day every thing was done in European style, and the table was hardly large enough to hold the dishes piled together upon it.
But so it is all the world over—rich people find friendly faces every where, and are received with every mark of good-will and respect; but when the poorer guest arrives, the mask is taken off; and whoever travels as I do, gets to know human nature as it is, and the verdict can very seldom be given in its favor. ”

“ Every illness is trying; but the Madagascar fever is, perhaps, one of the most malignant of all diseases, and in my opinion it is far more formidable than the yellow fever or the cholera. In the two last-named diseases the patient’s sufferings are certainly more violent, but a few days decide the question of death or recovery, while, on the other hand, this horrible fever hangs about those it attacks month after month. Violent pains are felt in the lower parts of the body, frequent vomitings ensue, with total loss of appetite, and such weakness that the sufferer can hardly move hand or foot. ”

“ To have attained to wealth and independence is too great a crime in a subject not to draw down all kinds of persecution on the luckless delinquent. If the queen gets to know that any village is rich in cattle, rice, and other produce—money, of course, is out of the question among the villagers—she imposes a task upon the people which they can not execute ”

“ But executions, poisonings, slavery, plunderings, and other punishments do not exhaust the people’s catalogue of woes. In devising plans of malignity and cruelty, Queen Ranavola’s penetration is wonderful; and she has invented farther means for ruining the unhappy population, and plunging it still deeper into misery. One device for carrying out this end, often adopted by the queen, is a royal journey. ”

“ Laborde and other Europeans in Madagascar assure me that strong affection exists here among the natives between parents and children, but that it is not customary to display that affection. I can not believe it, with such a display of indifference before my eyes. A mother who felt real affection toward her child would certainly not be able to conform to custom so completely as to prevent herself from giving the little one a loving glance from time to time. ”

“ Lambert had done in reference to Madagascar came to the ears of a great missionary society in England. The society feared that, in the event of the French occupation of the island, the Roman Catholic religion might be the only form of worship introduced and licensed, which, in their opinion, would be, of course, a much greater misfortune for the inhabitants than the mere fact of their being ruled by an utterly cruel woman, like Queen Ranavola, who plays with human lives and sacrifices them at her pleasure! ”

“ The people themselves have no idea that the beauties of Nature are pleasant things to see, and wonder that strangers should expose themselves to the slightest fatigue merely to see a waterfall, a mountain, or a fine view.
The men are solely and exclusively engaged in the business of acquiring wealth as quickly as possible: sugar is a sort of golden calf to them, and whatever has no reference to sugar is to them worthless. The women are not much better. They have too little education, and too much of the indolence so frequently found in hot countries to take an interest in any serious subject. ”

“ Horrible is the fate of the sick and wounded soldiers, not only during a flight, when, of course, no one cares about them, but even during ordinary marches. Their comrades are bound to take care of them, and to carry and feed them; but how can people be expected to do this who are themselves in want of every thing, and often so much weakened by hunger and toil of every kind that they can scarcely drag themselves along and carry their weapons? ”

“ I fear there will be horrible scenes of blood. The poor people may all be executed, for it will be presumed that they were aware of their neighbors’ hiding-place. From the queen they have certainly no mercy to expect, for she has death-sentences carried out with the utmost rigor; indeed, no instance is known in which she has pardoned any one condemned to lose his life.
Prince Rakoto sent us word to-day that the queen intended giving a great banquet to Mr. Lambert, to which all the other Europeans would of course be invited. ”

“ On such occasions many die of hunger and misery, from having taken an insufficient supply of rice; money they have none, and must therefore seek to sustain life as best they may with roots and herbs. Their destruction seems to be the object of the queen; for she hates all the people who are not of her own race, and her greatest desire would seem to be to annihilate them all at one blow. ”

“ Every time my unlucky destiny led me into such a house, I looked forward with terror to the night, which I was sure to pass in sleepless discomfort, burning with heat, and half stifled for want of air. In Ceylon the roofs are also sometimes covered with lead or zinc; but the houses are much more lofty, and the metal is not exposed to the burning rays of the sun, but covered with wood or straw. ”

“ To check this, the queen condemned every fugitive to death; but, on the other hand, she relieved the inhabitants of villages on the roads from military service, the most hateful of all obligations to the people. A few little villages were also stocked with royal slaves, who had no other duty assigned to them but to act as carriers. If the people had only to transport the royal luggage and goods,{169} their service would not be a heavy one; but every nobleman, every officer, can procure an order for similar service, and even compel the people to work without showing any authority at all. ”

“ Thus enshrouded, the corpse is placed in a kind of coffin, and lies in state in the principal apartment in the house, under a canopy of red silk. Slaves crouch around it, crowded together as closely as possible, with their hair hanging loose, and their heads bent down in token of mourning; each of them is furnished with a kind of fan to keep off the flies and musquitoes from the deceased. This strange occupation is continued day and night; and as high personages are frequently kept unburied for several weeks, the slaves have to be continually relieved by others. ”

“ As soon as this came to the queen’s ears, she laid a fine of four hundred dollars upon the whole caste, and had one hundred and twenty-six persons selected from it and sold as slaves; among these were many women and children.
The entire population of a village sometimes fall into slavery merely for eating the flesh of a stolen ox. Stealing an ox is a crime punished with death; but if the stolen beast belonged to the queen, not only is the thief executed, but all who have partaken of the ox’s flesh are sold into slavery ”