HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
147 
ordeal itself, and the mode of its administration, differ. All 
employ the sikidy, or divination, but have different modes 
of working it. The same division of the year into twelve 
moons is universal, but the moons are designated by 
different names, one class of names being used by the inha¬ 
bitants of the coast, another by those of the interior. All 
have the singular and remarkakle practice of observing one 
day in the week as more sacred, favoured of the gods, or 
more lucky, than the rest: some, however, regard Friday 
as that day, others Saturday, and others Sunday. These 
instances are sufficient to shew that a description of the 
manners and customs of the inhabitants of one portion of 
the island will be, in all its essential features, applicable 
to the whole. 
Besides the causes already assigned for this general 
uniformity in the usages of the distinct races of inhabitants, 
that uniformity has undoubtedly often been preserved, and 
the usages themselves in many instances perpetuated, by 
that aversion to change which operates so powerfully in all 
nations under despotic and weak governments, with which 
it is a chief maxim of policy to perpetuate, unaltered from 
age to age, the manners and habits of the people. To think 
or act otherwise than their ancestors have thought and 
acted for them, would manifest an independence of mind 
and action alarming to the despot by whom they may be 
governed, and would evince an amount of intelligence 
that in these circumstances has rarely been obtained, and 
has but seldom been deemed, by the people themselves, 
either desirable or practicable. 
As education elevates the mind, and enlarges the range 
of thought and sentiment, and as knowledge and civilization 
advance in the country, some of these observances will 
gradually sink into desuetude, and in a slight degree there 
l 2 
