468 
HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR 
advancing a few days’ journey, being met by the queen’s 
officers from the capital, his bearers, apprehensive of the 
consequences of their displeasure, left him. He refused 
to return to the coast, and remained at Ambatoharanana, 
where, while waiting permission from the queen to advance, 
he died suddenly, not without strong suspicions of having 
poisoned himself. Though, on the arrival of the envoy from 
the pope, the government exhibited no disposition to favour 
the efforts of popish missionaries in the island, their disin¬ 
clination did not arise from any wish to promote the objects 
of the Protestants who had laboured among them so many 
years. The value of the enterprise, energy, and skill of 
the artisans belonging to the Mission, who were employed 
either in their respective departments, or in superintending 
and completing works of great national importance, they 
were fully sensible of, and held also in high estimation, but 
solely for the purposes of government, the knowledge of 
letters acquired in the schools: and in consideration of 
these advantages, the party whose counsels prevailed in the 
palace, rather tolerated than encouraged the efforts of the 
Missionaries to diffuse religious knowledge, and promote the 
moral and spiritual benefit of the people. 
Circumscribed as the means of usefulness now were, in 
comparison with what they had been during the reign of 
Radama, and the earlier periods of that of his successor, the 
increasing frequency of events, which showed distinctly to 
the Missionaries the extreme uncertainty of the continuance 
of present advantages, stimulated them to the most active 
and unremitted efforts; while the multiplied and decisive 
evidence that their labours were attended by the Divine 
blessing, enabled them to bear with cheerfulness the with- 
drawment of that countenance from the rulers of the country, 
with which their exertions had formerly been attended 
