428 VISITS TO MADAGASCAR. criAP. xr. 



" And the eighteen appointed to die, as they sat on the 

 ground surrounded by the soldiers, saag the 137th hymn*: 



' When I shall die, and leave my friends, 



When they shall weep for me. 

 When departed has my life, 

 Then I shall be happy.' 



" When that hymn was finished, they sang the 1 54th : — 

 ' When I shall behold Him rejoicing in the heavens,' &c. 



"And when the sentences were all pronounced, and the 

 officer was about to return to the chief authorities, the* four 

 sentenced to be burned requested him to ask that they might 

 be killed first, and then burned. But they were burned 

 alive. 



" When the officer was gone, they took those eighteen 

 away to put them to death. The fourteen they tied by the 

 hands and the feet to long poles, and carried on men's 

 shoulders. And these brethren prayed, and spoke to the 

 people, as they were being carried along. And some who 

 beheld them, said that their faces were like the faces of 

 angels. And when they came to the top of Nampaminarina 

 they cast them down, and their bodies were afterwards dragged 

 to the other end of the capital, to be burned with the bodies 

 of those who were burned alive. 



*' And as they took the four that were to be burned alive 

 to the place of execution, these Christians sang the 90th hymn, 

 beginning, ' \Mien our hearts are troubled,' each verse ending 

 with, ' Then remember us.' Thus they sang on the road. 

 And when they came to Faravohitra, there they burned them, 

 fixed betwixt split spars. And there was a rainbow in the 



• The numbers refer to the collection of printed hymns in the native lan- 

 guage. The translation is verbal and literal, not a metrical rendering of the 

 meaning. 



