CHAP. XII. FORMER HUNTING EXPEDITIONS. 317 



numbers, and in all parts of the island, as one of the few 

 names by which the natives designate their whole country 

 is, Nesindambo, literally, island of luild boars. They are 

 often chased and killed by the natives. Part of a wild boar 

 had not been an unfrequent dish at the tables of the 

 foreign resident at Tamatave, at whose hospitable board I was 

 a guest during much of the time that I resided there. The 

 hunting of the wild boar, as well as of the wild cattle which 

 roam in large herds over the uninhabited parts of the coimtry, 

 seems to have been a favourite pursuit with the Mmrods of 

 Madagascar from very early times. The crocodile is reported 

 to have been the game of the Vazimba, or earliest inhabitants 

 of the country. At the time when Drury resided on the 

 island, viz. 150 years ago, hunting the wild cattle and wild 

 boars was the occasional occupation and amusement of the 

 daring and adventurous chiefs of that part of the island in 

 which he resided, and, as the spear was the weapon chiefly 

 employed, the sport was far more exciting and perilous than 

 it has been of later times, the mere act of slaughtering the 

 animals being the least exciting part of the sport. 



The late king Radama occasionally hunted the wild cattle 

 and other animals ; but his hunting expeditions were more 

 like organised military invasions of the territories of these 

 denizens of the desert, than ordinary pursuits of the chase, 

 and the numbers killed would seem to have surpassed even 

 the murderous battues of the Grerman sportsmen. Eadama 

 sometimes led two or three thousand troops to the chase, and, 

 as a portion of these carried fire-arms, the slaughter was 

 immense. In an account which I obtained during my visit, 

 of one of these hunting expeditions to a region about 100 

 miles or more to the west of the capital, in the autumn of 

 1825, the writer, a native, states — "And these are the 

 animals we obtained in the end of September and beginning 

 of October — 



