HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
153 
The price at which slaves were usually bought at the 
capital varied from thirty to fifty or sixty dollars per head, 
and on the coast from forty to eighty. These, on reaching 
Mauritius, a voyage of not more than ten days, would 
average from one hundred and fifty to three hundred dollars 
per head, and for some even so much as four hundred have 
been given. The trade was therefore sufficiently lucrative to 
form a powerful temptation to many. The heart was 
steeled, while the coffers were replenished. Human misery 
was insulted, while avarice triumphed in the spoils, and 
idolized her gold. 
It reflects lasting honour upon the English nation, that 
no sooner did Madagascar come within the immediate influ¬ 
ence of Great Britain, by her having taken possession of 
the Isles of France and Bourbon, with their dependencies, 
than a series of efforts was commenced, with a view to the 
ultimate annihilation of the traffic in slaves throughout that 
extensive island. To the honour of Sir Robert Farquhar, 
in particular, it is worthy of being recorded, that no exer¬ 
tions were wanting on his part, to carry this noble pur¬ 
pose into effect, whether such exertions demanded talent, 
labour, influence, or money. The measures pursued in fur¬ 
therance of the design of abolishing the slave-trade in 
Madagascar, will very properly form a part of the plan of 
the present work, and cannot be deemed uninteresting to 
the humane and enlightened reader. 
Sir Robert Farquhar, governor of Mauritius, having, by 
various means, obtained much valuable information respect¬ 
ing the state of the different provinces in Madagascar, 
together with a tolerably correct idea of the power, resources, 
and dispositions of their different chieftains, found, on a 
general survey of the whole, that the province of Ankova might 
be considered the most important in a political point of view, 
