158 
MADAGASCAR. 
festival and the sacred character of Malagasy 
royalty. 
The different tribes with whom Drury lived 
during his stay in Madagascar seem to have been 
frequently at war with one another, but more for 
purposes of plunder and cattle and slave dealing 
than for conquest. Their expeditions were not 
accompanied with anything like the cruelty and 
cold-blooded atrocity which marked the march 
of Kanavalona’s armies, disciplined and armed 
with European weapons. The Malagasy tribes 
appear to have lived much in the same way as 
the freebooting Highland clans of that very 
time, with their frequent raids into their neigh¬ 
bours' domains to carry off sheep and cattle, or 
like the border chiefs of England and Scotland 
at an earlier period. 
The generally kind treatment which Drury 
received was not an exceptional case. From the 
earliest date of their intercourse with Europeans, 
the Malagasy have shown a friendliness and a 
wish to conciliate, contrasting strangely with the 
disgraceful conduct of those who visited them, 
both Portuguese and French. From the first 
they were remarkably scrupulous in keeping to 
the engagements which they entered into with 
Europeans, and it was not until they learned by 
frequent experience how so-called Christians were 
not ashamed to deceive and injure them, that they 
