232 
HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
volent feelings, than the kind, patient, and affectionate 
manner in which they attend upon the sick. Every thing 
within the compass of their means, that can administer to 
their comfort, mitigate their sufferings, or favour recovery, 
is provided. Wives frequently watch on the same couch 
on which their husbands are suffering under the fever, 
until the dreadful malady seizes them, when, on account of 
their great exhaustion and fatigue, they frequently become 
its victims. 
The superstitions of the Malagasy unfold no bright 
futurity beyond the grave, but leave all in gloom and 
uncertainty. Hence the relatives, out of kind regard for 
the sufferer, carefully abstain from the mention of death, 
until its speedy approach seems inevitable. 
Sometimes, besides the application of medicine, change 
of place, &c., the sikidy directs that a faditra be made; 
that is, an offering for the removal of the evil which is 
supposed to have occasioned the disease. 
The faditra is frequently in itself of a very trifling 
nature, perhaps a little grass, or an herb, the name of which 
must be carefully specified; perhaps a small quantity of 
earth, taken from the ground at a spot measured by a given 
number of feet from the patient’s door; or it may be 
merely the water with which he rinses his mouth ! These 
being simply thrown away, according to the direction of 
the sikidy, are supposed to bear away with them, in some 
inexplicable manner, the causes of the malady in question, 
or else to counteract the spell by which, from sorcery or 
some unknown cause, the malady has arisen. 
In addition to the faditra, the sikidy generally directs 
some offering to be made of a supplicatory nature. This 
is called the sdrona, and consists of a few beads, or orna- 
