i88 TAMEHAMEHA. 



palace and salute the Queen with music and drums, presenting 

 arms in the European fashion. It is, therefore, highly im- 

 proper to shoot in the direction of the palace when shooting 

 wild fowl anywhere in Imerina, as it appears like a threat 

 towards the majesty living therein. 



In whatever assembly a Malagasy sovereign appears, she 

 must always be seated in the highest place. And so, when 

 the present Queen came to the opening of one of the Memorial 

 Churches, she chose the gallery in the transept for her posi- 

 tion ; and at another church oj)ening at which she was pre- 

 sent, a temporary gallery was erected for her accommodation. 

 And in her own chapel royal her throne, richly carved, and 

 with a highly ornamented canoj^y of dark wood, is the highest 

 place in the building (see engraving in Sunday at Home, 

 March 1879, p. 200, where the royal seat is to the right, 

 facing the pulpit). This custom is another of those numerous 

 links of connection between Madagascar and the Polynesian 

 Islands, for the people of these latter have precisely the same 

 notion. In Tyerman and Bennet's Voyages (p. 118, 2d ed.), 

 it is said of Tamehameha, King of the Sandwich Islands, 

 that " if he were on board a ship in the cabin, and found that 

 any of his subjects had walked, even inadvertently, on that 

 pjirt of the deck which v/as over his head, it would have cost 

 them their lives as soon as they reached shore. When the 

 British governor proposed to make him the present of a 

 vessel, he desired it might be so built as not to require 

 in the management that the sailors should ever step upon 

 the cabin roof, as none of his people, by the law of his 

 country, were allowed to be above him at any time." At 

 the opening of any building, church or private house, a dollar 

 is presented by the congregation or the owner to the highest 

 military officer present, as an acknowledgment of the Queen's 

 proprietorship of the land on which it is built, all the soil 

 being theoretically vested in the sovereign. 



One of the oddest occurrences to a foreigner newly arrived 

 in Antananarivo is the respect paid to royal property when 

 passing through the streets, for not only must every one turn 

 out of the way before the sovereign, but also before anything 

 belonging to her. "When being quietly carried through the 



