280 
country to dance, gesticulate, and receive congratulations, 
she proceeded home without pausing anywhere, her attend- 
ants making a mere humming sound expressive of their 
joy. The Queen showed some good feeling by sending ber 
especial congratulations, saying, that though Radama was. 
gone, she would be a mother to her, and never injure her. 
In May, after the females had undergone the ordeal, the | 
administrators themselves were compelled to drink along with 
others, making in all about sixty persons. Two of the former, 
and two of the common people were victims, and the sur- 
vivors made the usual triumphant entry. 
After these, the Skids, or Diviners, took their turn, ems i 
of whom died. One of them having previously adopted my 
printer as his son, I chance to know the particulars of his 
decease. His stomach became prodigiously swollen, his legs 
enlarged, the face was discoloured and distorted, and the sub- 
` stance evacuated by vomiting appeared bilious and bloody: 
till, after a short time, he expired in great agony, doubtless . 
from the effect of this most potent poison. 
The instances that are mentioned above of tbe ordeal a are 
but a few of such as came under my own immediate observa- 
tion: in every village similar general drinkings took place 
in addition to which, numbers took it at their own houses, 
and whole families of slaves, without publicity. So numerous 
were these private administrations, that for some months . 
wherever I happened to be walking or riding, I perceived the 
signs of some individuals who either had drunk, or were 
actually taking the Tanghin. It is also common for the 
Judges, when a case is of difficult decision, to cause the poison - 
to be administered to both parties, by which numbers. are 
sacrificed. Hence, at the great assembly of judicature, in _ 
1831, where upwards of 500 persons were cited to take their _ 
trial, many cases were eventually closed by an appeal to the — 
Tanghin. 7 
The people are by nc no means patented with. this general $ 
application of the cleansing process, every. one is secretly 
trembling for himself and his near connexions, and the exa _ 
pence is so ruinous to the majority of them, that many declare _ 
