HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
159 
superstitiously regarded as the part appropriated to what 
is ill-omened and fatal. The parents then rub a small 
quantity of red earth into their clothes, and afterwards 
shake them, as if to avert or shake off from themselves 
the evil supposed to attend their slight and transient contact 
with that which had been doomed to destruction. 
Another mode of perpetrating this unnatural deed is 
by taking the infant to a retired spot in the neighbourhood 
of the village, digging a grave sufficiently large to receive 
it, pouring in a quantity of water slightly warmed, putting 
a piece of cloth upon the infant’s mouth, placing it in the 
grave, filling this up with earth, and leaving the helpless 
child, thus buried alive, a memorial of their own affecting 
degradation, and the relentless barbarism of their gloomy 
superstition—a trophy of the dominion of the destroyer of 
our race, and a painfully conclusive illustration of the truth 
of that word which declares that the dark places of the 
earth are full of the habitations of cruelty. 
These heart-rending transactions are generally per¬ 
formed by the parents themselves, or some of the nearest 
kindred of the family, frequently by the father, while the 
mother, anxious to press her infant to her bosom as long as 
possible, holds it while preparations for the savage deed 
are going forward, and when it is taken from her arms, 
to be consigned thus prematurely to the earth, gives vent 
to her anguish and distress by lamenting and weeping, in 
which she is joined by her female kindred and com¬ 
panions, who return with her in sad procession to her 
dwelling. 
It is affecting to contemplate the extent to which the 
unnatural practice of child-murder prevails in almost every 
nation in a state of heathenism, whether learned or illi¬ 
terate, civilized or barbarous, and to notice the resemblance 
