202 
HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
of their arrival, had discontinued all friendly intercourse 
with Radama. He was also unfavourable to the com¬ 
mencement of their mission, and they were consequently 
obliged to remain in Mauritius. 
In order to continue a correct and circumstantial account 
of the public transactions by which the intercourse between 
Great Britain and Madagascar was rendered more fre¬ 
quent, it is necessary, in this part of the history, to allude 
to the early views of the Missionary Society, and to recur to 
a period many years antecedent to the date of the first 
Missionaries’ arrival, for the kind and Christian interest 
with which some pious individuals regarded the state of 
that benighted country. 
For many years before they were able to obtain any 
actual establishments in Madagascar, the members of the 
London Missionary Society had directed their attention to 
that island, as a most important sphere for missionary 
labours. At one of the earliest meetings of the friends of 
that Society, held in 1796, when the resolution was adopted 
of commencing a mission in the South Sea Islands, amongst 
several memorials containing views of stations deemed 
particularly eligible for missionary efforts, one was pre¬ 
sented in favour of Madagascar. From that period, no 
means were left untried to obtain the most correct and 
extensive information as to the state of the country, the 
parts best suited for the first stations of the Society, and the 
most probable methods of prosecuting their great object 
with success. 
With these views, the directors, in the instructions which 
they gave to Dr. Vanderkemp at the time of his sailing 
from England, in 1798, to commence a mission in South 
Africa, embraced the opportunity of urging upon that inde¬ 
fatigable and extraordinary man, their earnest desire that he 
