IMPROVED SOCIAL HABITS. 355 



Antananarivo, but now several firms carry on a profitable 

 business, besides which a great amount of goods are brought 

 up by the native traders. So true it always is that Christianity 

 is the best civiliser, and the harbinger of all honest trade. 



The erection of improved dwellings is also slowly leading 

 to improved social habits. Instead of being all crowded 

 together in a house of one room, a family has now in many 

 cases two or three separate sleeping places ; although in this 

 respect there is still abundant room for improvement, as is 

 also the case in the cottages of our English labourers and 

 artisans. During the last few years the repeal of the ancient 

 law forbidding the erection of any but wood or rush houses 

 in the capital and other ancient towns has led to the almost 

 entire rebuilding of Antananarivo ; sun-dried brick is largely 

 used for building houses and churches ; the old wooden 

 houses with their lofty high-pitched and thatched roofs have 

 almost entirely disappeared, and have been replaced by scores 

 of convenient two-storeyed and verandahed dwellings, many of 

 them with tiled roofs. The erection of the Martyr Memorial 

 Churches (1864-1874) gave a great impetus to the building 

 art ; it showed the people how to use their own stores of stone 

 and clay, and timber and metal, and numbers of intelligent 

 natives have become clever workmen. 



But one of the most decided proofs of advance is the 

 improved state of feeling with regard to polygamy and 

 divorce, and the marriage relation generally. In their 

 heathen state the Hovas were most immoral; chastity and 

 purity were almost unknown, and a common proverb com- 

 pared marriage to a knot which could be untied with the 

 slightest touch ; polygamy was general, and divorce a matter 

 of everyday occurrence. But an enlightened public opinion, 

 a Christian conscience, is growing up on all these subjects, 

 and is strengthening year by year ; so that now polygamy is 

 at an end in Imerina, and divorce is vastly less frequent than 

 it used to be. The sanctity of the marriage tie is more and 

 more recognised by the people, so that infringement of its 

 acknowledged obligations is increasingly condemned, while 

 church censure makes itself felt as a very powerful restraint 

 upon wrong-doers. 



