VI 
PREFACE. 
inspected the following pages as they have passed 
through the press. 
The history of Madagascar is, in many respects, 
highly instructive. It exhibits a branch of that sin¬ 
gular and widely-scattered race inhabiting chiefly the 
coasts and islands of South-eastern Asia; preserv¬ 
ing in their language, and many of their customs, 
unequivocal signs of identity, yet dwelling at a dis¬ 
tance from the Malayan archipelago, or the groups 
of Polynesia, greater than, without the strongest evi¬ 
dence, we should have believed it possible for them to 
reach. It shows an interesting portion of the human 
family, gradually emerging from the ignorance and 
rudeness which characterise the earliest stages of 
society, exhibiting the intelligence and energy, and 
acquiring the comforts, of a civilized state. It further 
shows a people, with scarcely a single exception, 
friendly and hospitable to their visiters, until goaded 
to outrage and violence by ill-treatment, or rendered 
more corrupt than they were before, by the vicious 
influence and example of their visiters. 
The work will also encourage the philanthropist in 
his career of undaunted and persevering benevolence, 
by exhibiting the success with which the iniquitous 
traffic in human beings had been prohibited, in what 
was once one of the most frequented slave-markets in 
the world. 
