HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
3 
The accounts already given, relate chiefly to the native 
races inhabiting the interior, and describe their manners 
and customs, &c., as they have been exhibited within the 
last twenty years. But the habits and usages of the 
natives described by those who have dwelt among them 
during the period above referred to, resemble so closely 
all the notices of the Malagasy given by every writer 
entitled to credit, by whom their country has been visited 
since its discovery by Europeans, that they may, with 
propriety, be regarded as imparting a correct view, not 
only of the state of the people in recent times, but for 
many preceding generations. The account of the natives 
in the state in which they were found by the Missionaries 
has been given ; the extent to which their character, insti¬ 
tutions, and observances have been influenced by the resi¬ 
dence of Europeans in the island, has also been noticed 
in the preceding volume; and to the narrative of the 
chief events that have occurred among them since their 
discovery, so far as these can be ascertained, the subse¬ 
quent pages are appropriated. 
There is reason to believe that none of the races com¬ 
prehended in the existing population of Madagascar were 
among its earliest inhabitants. The Vazimba, the sites of 
whose rude villages, which, like those of the ancient 
Britons in our own country, may still be traced in several 
of the interior provinces of the island, whose graves have 
for many generations been regarded with profound vene¬ 
ration, and have been, to a certain extent, the altars and 
the objects of their superstitious worship, seem to have 
been one of the earliest races in Madagascar with whose 
existence the uncertain light of oral tradition has made 
us acquainted. To this race, which is now only to be 
found in the legendary history of the island, a higher 
B 2 
