50 
HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
means of interrupting the commerce between India and 
Europe, and confined them to their settlements on the coast 
of Madagascar. Forced to give up their wandering and 
predatory life, they plunged into a different kind of villany, 
which has left upon their memory a deeper stain. Tired 
of the dull inactivity of the life they led in the fertile dis¬ 
tricts where they were hospitably entertained, but being too 
weak in numbers to conquer the natives, they devised a 
plan for increasing their own wealth and their own infamy 
at the same time. The sale of prisoners for slaves answered 
doubly their views of exciting and perpetuating divisions 
among the Malagasy, and procuring the means of riches to 
themselves; and of being not only pardoned for past trans¬ 
gressions, but courted and protected by the European 
powers, who had so lately been their most formidable 
enemies. 
It is stated by Rochon, that, in the year 1722, soon after 
the destruction of the ships belonging to the pirates, the 
Betanimenes, a people inhabiting the country towards the 
interior, had resorted to one of the villages where the 
stores belonging to the pirates were deposited, with a 
view of purchasing such articles as were suited to their 
necessities or tastes. Those most in request were India 
stuffs, Musilepatam handkerchiefs, muslins, and calicoes. 
The people of Anteva, and probably the people of Tama- 
tave and Mahavebona, inhabiting the sea-coast in the 
neighbourhood of the pirates, received the Betanimenes 
with the greatest cordiality, not only on their own account, 
but because they would have deemed themselves wanting 
in hospitality as well as in friendliness to the pirates, had 
they caused the least interruption in the trade of cattle, 
and of provisions of all sorts necessary for the victualling 
of their ships. 
