520 
HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
acknowledge the sovereignty of the queen. The negociations 
relating to the terms of their submission being completed, 
and, after being induced to give up their arms on the most 
solemn and repeated promises of the queen’s friendship 
and protection, they assembled, men, women, and children, 
in the neighbourhood of the Hova army. The men were 
then required to remove to a short distance, under pretence 
of taking the oath of allegiance. As striking a pool of 
water, constitutes a part of the ceremony, a low swampy 
ground was chosen for the occasion. Such was the osten¬ 
sible reasons of the choice. A darker reason was concealed 
in the bosoms of the chief leaders of the queen’s troops. 
On the arrival of the natives at the appointed place, they 
were surrounded by the soldiers, and were then deliberately 
murdered ! Not fewer than ten thousand men were thus 
basely assassinated on the spot! 
The troops then selected, from the company of the wives 
and children of the murdered natives, all the boys capable 
of carrying arms. A given height had been fixed on by 
the queen as a standard, and all the youths above that 
measure, though they did not exceed it by half an inch, 
were conducted to the fatal spot where their fathers and 
brothers had perished, and there were also put to death. 
The wives and the rest of the children were then driven 
off as slaves, towards Imerina, the queen’s people carrying 
with them as booty, whatever cattle and other property 
they could find. 
In another part of the country, where the inhabitants 
were subdued, fifty of the most venerable men of the place, 
after having been kept prisoners in the ditches or trenches 
around their fortification for several days, were barbarously 
nailed and bound to crosses, fixed on the outside of one of 
their villages, where they were left to perish in the most 
