ARAB INFLUENCE 255 



yet no serious injury be done to the vital parts of the insect. 

 However this may be, the point appears to me to be worth 

 noting down as a curious fact. 



Talking with the people in the evening, we found we were in 

 one of the districts where the Arab influence must have been 

 very strong in former times. They are called Zafin Ibrahim 

 (descendants of Abraham), and told us they were connected 

 with the Jews. There is no doubt, however, that the Arabs had 

 anciently an important settlement here, and to some extent 

 taught the use of Arabic letters and literature ; but being 

 isolated from their fellow-countrymen and co-religionists, they 

 gradually became absorbed in the native population. It is 

 probable that many of the chiefs of the south-east tribes are of 

 Arab descent, and so are often lighter in colour than the mass 

 of the people. An intelligent young man gave me a paper 

 containing all the Arabic characters and many of the syllabic 

 sounds, with their equivalents in Malagasy. He had, about 

 six years previously, copied out for M. A. Grandidier, who was 

 then exploring the coasts of Madagascar, a number of extracts 

 from native Arabic books of prayers, genealogies, and sorcery. 

 This young man's father, then dead, was one of the ombiasy or 

 diviners, and his books of charms and incantations, being 

 supposed to be connected with idolatry, were destroyed at the 

 time of the burning of the idols in 1869. A few years after our 

 journey, two of the Betsileo missionaries, when making an 

 evangelistic tour among the south-east tribes, obtained some 

 pages of manuscript from this neighbourhood. These were 

 apparently written in Arabic ; and on being submitted to an 

 expert in that language, were pronounced to be extracts from 

 the Koran, evidently copied by someone who did not know 

 Arabic, and so were full of errors ; these quotations were no 

 doubt used as charms and invocations. (I may here notice 

 that, very recently, copies of the Malagasy scriptures have been 

 boiled by the native diviners, and the water sold as a very 

 powerful charm !) 



Being near the sea, we had opportunities of seeing many birds 

 which are oceanic in their distribution, among which are the 

 frigate-birds (one species), and the tropic-birds (two species). 

 The former are true pirates, living almost in dependence upon 

 other fishing birds, whom they force, when these are weaker 



