44 
HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
honest-hearted Englishman, and who had so recently 
escaped from a bondage, all the bitterness of which he had 
so often tasted, makes a most affecting addition to the 
painfully-abounding evidence of the universality of false 
opinion and depraved feeling among our own countrymen 
at the time, as well as of the dreadful effects of the 
abhorred system of slavery on all who are brought under 
its influence. 
After the abandonment of Fort Dauphin by Bretesche, and 
the consequent destruction of the garrison, the intercourse 
between Europeans and the inhabitants of Madagascar was 
for a considerable time merely casual. Ships from Europe, 
bound to India, usually touched at the island for a supply of 
provisions, but no attempt was made to establish a colony ; 
and but few events relating to the country, at all worthy of 
notice, transpired until the beginning of the seventeenth cen * 
tury, when the pirates, who, from the time when Vasco di 
Gama opened the highway from Europe to India, had 
infested the Indian seas, formed an establishment at the Isle 
St. Mary’s, situated off the north-east coast of Madagascar. 
Allusion has already been made, in a former chapter, to 
the settlement of these marauders, but there is sufficient 
authority for believing that they landed on many different 
parts of the coast, and took shelter from the several powers 
combined against them, wherever an eligible situation was 
presented to their choice. Rochon, on the authority of 
Bigorne, a soldier in the French East India Company’s ser¬ 
vice, gives many interesting particulars relating to the inter¬ 
course between the pirates and the natives, and describes 
the system of policy which induced these settlers to cultivate 
the good-will and esteem of the natives. By means of alliances 
contracted with the islanders, the pirates insinuated them¬ 
selves into their confidence; and such were the important 
