34 
' HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
Kercadio, who appears to have been a brave and sensible 
man, had the charge of an expedition fitted out for Mada¬ 
gascar at the sole expense of Marshal Meilieraye, for the 
purpose of endeavouring to establish another colony on the 
island. On their arrival at Madagascar, however, a number 
of the men escaped on shore, and joined the garrison at 
Fort Dauphin, in the hope of freeing themselves from the 
service to which they were destined, many of them being 
pressed men. 
On learning the cause of the distress in which the garri¬ 
son at Fort Dauphin was involved, Kercadio, aware that 
the utmost relief he could afford them must necessarily be 
of a temporary nature, endeavoured to persuade Chamargou 
to consult the welfare of his settlement, and seek the friend¬ 
ship of La Case; representing to him that that officer, after 
his marriage with Andrian Nong, could no longer be consi¬ 
dered as a subject of France, and therefore was not amenable 
to the laws of the colony. No arguments, however, that 
he could advance, had any weight with the governor, to 
whose resentment the very existence of the colony seemed 
on the point of being sacrificed. 
It was no unusual circumstance at that period, when 
such an expedition as that of Kercadio’s was about to be 
fitted out from France, for families to apply to the govern¬ 
ment, in case there was a dissolute or depraved character 
belonging to them, for an authority (called lettres-de-cachet) 
to transport him to some of the new colonies; and it so 
happened that a barrister, who by this means had been 
conveyed on board Kercadio’s vessel, proved of essential 
service in bringing the governor to a proper sense of his 
real situation. The brother of this barrister, an abandoned 
man, had so highly offended his family, that they applied 
for a lettre-de-cachet, to attach him to the expedition to 
