32 VISITS TO MADAGASCAR. chap. ii. 



On the occasion of our first interview with the chief with 

 whom we were now conversing, whenever he required the 

 agreeable stimulus, which was tolerably frequent, the at- 

 tendant slave who was usually squatted behind him, pre- 

 sented to him a short piece of bamboo cane, about nine 

 inches or a foot long, and less than an inch in diameter, 

 beautifully polished, and ornamented with rings. Into the 

 end of this cylindrical case a circular piece of cane or wood 

 attached to a long tassel of silk threads was neatly fitted. 

 When the slave had removed this ingeniously contrived 

 stopper or lid, the chief took the cylinder, and, shaking a 

 small quantity, about half a teasi)oonful, into the palm of his 

 hand, he then by a quick jerk of the hand tossed the powder 

 with great dexterity on to his tongue, without touching his 

 lips with his hand or its contents. I do not remember ever 

 seeing any of the natives smoking tobacco, but this use of it 

 is universal ; and though some deposit it in a different man- 

 ner in the mouth, it was usually, as in this instance, jerked 

 upon the tongue. 



I now occupied myself in testing my progress in the lan- 

 guage, by asking the names of different objects, which I wrote 

 down as the natives pronounced them ; and I was much struck 

 with the perfect identity of the Malagasy and the Eastern 

 Polynesians in the names of many of the things most common 

 to both. One of these was a cocoa-nut tree, and to my sur- 

 prise they pronounced the name precisely as a South Sea 

 Islander would have done. The same was the case with the 

 pandanus or vacoua, one of the most common trees on the 

 coast both of Madagascar and Tahiti ; also the word for flower, 

 and the names of several parts of the human body. The 

 numerals were also, with but slight variation, identically the 

 same. The discovery of this resemblance between the lan- 

 guages spoken by two communities so widely separated from 

 each other, besides seeming to point out the source whence 



