ROCHON'S MAP. 17 



the most minute and exact in their fulness of detail ; and 

 knowing how little certainly was then ascertained as to the 

 interior of the island, we look at them with a feeling of 

 wonder as to whence their information could have been 

 derived. 



One of the most curious of these early maps is that 

 prefixed to an English edition of the Abbe Eochon's book 

 entitled, A Voyage to Madagascar and the East Indies (Lon- 

 don, 1793). According to this map, no part of the island 

 would appear to have been unknown to the map-maker; 

 the rivers with their tributaries have a picturesque symme- 

 try resembling that of stately trees, and the mountains a re- 

 gular cone-like outline only possessed by mountains seen 

 on a map. But on examining this map more minutely to 

 find out well-known places in the interior, we are puzzled to 

 find that neither the central and most important province of 

 Inienna, nor the capital city, Antananarivo, are shown ; and 

 it is the same with the important province of Betsileo and 

 its chief towns ; while some other places are strangely 

 transposed. Clearly this map owes more of its filling-in to 

 a lively imagination than to any exploration of the country, 

 notwithstanding the somewhat ambiguous assurance in its 

 title that it is " from the original design, drawn on the spot ; " 

 but what and where " the spot " was, is not specified.* 



Again, take a very pretentious-looking map published by 

 Arrowsmith, and purporting to be " Madagascar, from Original 

 Drawings, Sketches, and Oral Information, by J. A. Lloyd, 

 F.K.S., &c, &c, Surveyor- General of the Mauritius." The 

 last edition I have seen is dated 1850. In a journey to the 

 south-east part of Madagascar in 1876 I consulted this on 

 many occasions, but found that not the slightest reliance was 

 to be placed upon it. But subsequently meeting with a 

 pamphlet read by Colonel Lloyd before the Boyal Geogra- 

 phical Society upon Madagascar (10th December 1849), I 

 discovered a clue to the reason for all this; for at page 22, 

 in a few remarks upon the map accompanying his paper (a 



* Since writing the above, I find that Eochon's map is little more than a copy 

 of that given in Flacourt's Histoire de la Grande Isle de Madagascar, published 

 in 1661, a hundred and thirty years before Eochon's hook. 



B 



