ciiAJ-. I, FIRST PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS. 5 



of both parties to maintain, the queen's government had 

 shown its fixed determination not only to arrest the progress 

 of Christianity in the country, but to destroy it wherever it 

 might appear. Scarcely had the missionaries left the capital 

 in 1836, before a number of persons suspected of being 

 Christians were required to prove their innocence by drinking 

 the Tangena, or poison-water, which to many of them proved 

 fatal. 



In the following year a considerable number of the people 

 were accused of reading religious books and uniting in 

 Christian worship. Several of these were severely punished 

 by fine, imprisonment, or unredeemable slavery ; and one de- 

 voted Christian woman, Easalama, was put to death. In 1838, 

 Eafaralahy, a young man who had accompanied the first 

 Malagasy martyr to the place of execution, shared her fate ; 

 and before the close of the year, Kafaravavy, with four of her 

 companions, who subsequently visited England, only saved 

 their lives by escaping from the island. Others wandered 

 from place to place in much suffering and imminent peril, 

 often seeking concealment and safety in the almost impervious 

 forests and in the dreary caverns of the mountains, until the 

 year 1842, when sixteen of them, while on their way to the 

 coast with a view of escaping from the island, were betrayed 

 by their guides and taken back to the capital, where nine of 

 them were cruelly put to death. 



The effect of these sanguinary proceedings seemed to be 

 the very reverse of what the government intended. The at- 

 tention of all classes was thereby drawn to the subject of 

 religion, and the confidence of many in their idols appeared 

 greatly weakened, while the Christians seemed to be confirmed 

 in their faith by the severe ordeal through which it had sus- 

 tained them. 



Amongst others over whose minds the pretended power of 

 the idols had ceased to operate was the queen's son, then in 



B 3 



