FLORA, FAUNA, AND LANGUAGE. 
313 
name of landi-hazo. Foreign settlers have made 
one or two attempts to plant cotton on a large 
scale near Mahonoro, but so far their efforts 
have failed, chiefly for want of capital and 
technical knowledge of the work. 
The coffee plantations all along the fertile 
belt of country from Mahonoro in the south to 
Tamatave are flourishing, and promise to be 
a new and abundant source of wealth to the 
island in a few years. Most of these enterprises 
are in the hands of British subjects, and one or 
two companies formed in the Mauritius for the 
establishment and development of coffee and 
sugar planting in Madagascar. In clearing the 
low grounds, however, for the initiative process 
of planting, many lives have been sacrificed, as 
those spots most favourable for this industry 
were also too often the haunts of that terrible 
scourge of all tropical coasts, the miasmatic 
fever. Absence of all medical aid, and the 
scarcity of the necessaries of life, and of that 
absolute necessity, quinine, and the eagerness of 
the planters to make the most of their oppor¬ 
tunities, all conduced to bring about the speedy 
death of numbers of the little colony established 
on the Iharoka in 1875; and it appeared at 
one time that it would be necessary to abandon 
the enterprise entirely, on account .of the un¬ 
healthiness of the locality selected for the plant a- 
