■ SMALL POPULATION. 139 



has shown some sensitiveness to anything approaching a 

 collection by foreigners of statistics as to population, the 

 birth and death rate, &c. 



There are, however, some few facts and statistics available 

 from other sources, such as the rough numbering of villages 

 and houses in certain districts, and the observations of 

 travellers in passing through different parts of the island, 

 &c., from which some approximate estimate might be formed ; 

 although, with regard to some tribes, even these aids do 

 not exist, and it becomes more a matter of guess than of 

 calculation. 



Madagascar as a whole is very thinly peopled, and large 

 tracts of fertile country are wholly uninhabited. Many 

 reasons may be assigned why the population is not large, 

 and, apparently, has not increased:' since it was known to 

 Europeans. Among these are the too-early marriages which 

 are so common, the licentious habits of both sexes, and pro- 

 bably the intermarriage of near relatives, all tending to lessen 

 the fertility of the women, so that large families are rare. 

 Until the treaty made with England by Eadama I. (1820), 

 great numbers of the Malagasy were sold as slayes, and 

 carried away to Mauritius, Bourbon, and other foreign colonies. 

 Then the superstition of the people, causing them to put their 

 children to death if born on certain unlucky days, was a 

 means of keeping down the population in all parts of the 

 island, and still causes the destruction of a fourth of all the 

 children new-born in some of the "tribes. Then the tangdna 

 poison ordeal used to cause great waste of life ; and the 

 people resort to charms for the cure oT^disease, instead of 

 using the most simple medicines. Eor some five or six years 

 past the small-pox has ravaged the coast, passing round from 

 the north-west by the north to the south-east of the island, 

 and has lately caused considerable mortality in some of the 

 central southern provinces. Last year an unusual epidemic 

 of malarial fever passed over the central parts of Madagascar, 

 and occasioned great loss of life. To these causes may be 

 added the frequent wars between the different tribes, and 

 especially the great destruction of human life during the 

 long-continued wars carried on by the Hovas durmg the 



