28 
HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
the formation of new settlements in different parts of the 
world; and amongst the countries deemed most advan¬ 
tageous for this purpose, the island of Madagascar held a 
prominent place. Some interest seems to have been ex¬ 
cited in the public mind by the report of this island given 
by an embassy from England to the king of Persia; and 
amongst the accounts of voyagers and others who had 
visited Madagascar, the following by Richard Boothby, 
merchant of London, affords important evidence of the 
supposed advantages that would result from a British 
settlement in the island. 
Mr. Boothby gives the following reasons for publishing 
his account:— <c Forasmuch as great talk and rumour 
hath happened this last spring, 1644, about divers of 
his majesty’s subjects adventuring to Madagascar or St. 
Lawrence, in Asia, near unto the East Indies, and there to 
plant themselves, as in other parts of America; and seeing 
some, by report, are already gone upon that voyage, and 
myself have been desirous to deliver my opinion thereof, in 
regard of my being and abode upon that island three 
months or more together; as, first, about eleven or twelve 
years past, by the right worshipful Dr. Henry Gouch, 
Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, who himself, in his 
passage into Persia, in company with the right honourable 
Sir Dodmore Cotton and Sir Robert Sherley, ambassadors 
from king Charles of England to the king of Persia, was in 
that country, whom I satisfied, the best I could, out of 
those brief notes I had taken, not expecting to have been 
inquired my opinion thereof, for, otherwise, I would have 
been more exact and diligent in my observations. Secondly, 
about six or seven years past, the honourable Endymion 
Porter, and that excellent gentleman, Captain John Bond, 
well affected to that plantation, desired me to give him 
