268 
MADAGASCAR. 
tions of policy and manners which civilisation 
and a higher mental culture demand. The 
native of Madagascar has little or nothing in 
common with the Maori, the Zulu, or the Indian 
tribes of America. Much less has he anything 
in common with the fierce clans which people 
the countless isles of Polynesia either in dis¬ 
position or manner of life. The Hova has no 
characteristics of the coarse and vulgar savage, 
but, on the contrary, his mind and ideas appear 
to have reached a higher intellectual plane, far 
above the level of any of these uncivilised or 
semi-civilised nations or fragments of nations. 
The remarkable “ imitative ” faculty of the 
people of Madagascar long ago led them to ob¬ 
serve closely the political conduct and status of 
other and more powerful kingdoms ; embassies 
were sent to European courts as early as the 
reign of the first Kadama; and native youths of 
parts and promise were sent to other countries 
for education and instruction in the useful arts 
and sciences. These young men on their return 
would tell of what they had heard and seen, and 
thus would plant the seed of fresh ideas, and lay 
the foundations of new methods of doing things, 
which would in due course become assimilated 
by the people, and gradually adopted as part of 
the national code of law and morals. The fact 
of the existence of Madagascar as a power to- 
