250 
HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
The presents which Radama received from the king of 
England afforded him great pleasure. He valued them not 
only on account of their intrinsic worth, but as proofs of 
friendship towards himself. He called together his family 
and officers, and shewed to their astonishment a gold cup, 
two gold spears, a sword, a brace of pistols, a fowling-piece, 
&c. from his majesty George IV., exclaiming, “Ham 
the child of the king of England, and have nothing to fear, 
now that I have such a friend as this.” 
Immediately after this, and in consequence of receiving 
the presents, Radama erected in the village of Ambo- 
hitsarohitra, distant only a few minutes’ walk from the 
capital, a high pole covered with enormous spikes, and 
having a rope swung from the top by a hole passing through 
it. This was intended as a mode of punishing capitally any 
of his subjects who should be guilty of an infraction of the 
law against the slave-trade. He at the same time sent off 
his orders, in French and English, to Mazanga, on the 
western coast, forbidding both Arabs and natives to carry 
on the trade, although that part of Madagascar had not yet 
acknowledged his sovereignty. 
When the information reached Radama, in January, 
1821, by letters from Sir Robert Farquhar, that his excel¬ 
lency had agreed to all the conditions of the treaty, and 
that every thing was finally arranged and confirmed, he 
danced with delight; and on receiving communications 
from his brother-in-law, Prince Rataffe, respecting his 
reception at Mauritius, he actually shed tears of joy — 
a strong indication of the warm interest he cherished in 
the object to which he had pledged himself, and that, in 
honourable and noble sensibility of heart, he was not 
inferior to the refined inhabitants of more enlightened and 
powerful nations. 
