HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 319 
the native methods of working in wood, and taught them 
how to make glue, and to use it in joining boards together. 
The manufacture of large dishes, or fans for winnowing 
and cleaning the rice, of wooden bowls, and the preparation 
of wooden handles for their spades, occupied many of the 
native carpenters. Lathes have within the last few years 
been introduced, and many of the natives had made consi¬ 
derable proficiency in the art of turning, when the Mis¬ 
sionaries and the artisans were obliged to leave the country. 
In the year 1826 , Mr. Cameron, an intelligent artisan, whose 
scientific attainments were highly respectable, and who 
was acquainted with building and machinery in general, 
joined the Mission, and instructed many of the natives in 
the most approved methods of working in wood; and by the 
buildings he erected for the government, and the number 
of natives whom he taught as apprentices, would have 
greatly promoted the civilization of the people, had not the 
cruel and bigoted persecution of the Christians by the 
heathen government obliged him to leave the country. 
Many of the natives have, however, made respectable pro¬ 
ficiency in building, carpentry, and joinery, under the 
instructions of Monsieur Le Gros and Mr. Cameron. 
The chief works in which masonry is employed in Mada¬ 
gascar, are the walls and pavement in the court-yard around 
the houses of the sovereign, at the capital, and the chiefs in 
different parts of the country, and in the construction of 
the tombs and other monuments of the dead. The stone¬ 
masons quarry their stones not by boring and blasting 
them with powder, but by heating them with a fire kin¬ 
dled along the line in which they wish to detach a piece 
from the rock, and then dashing water on the parts they 
have heated. The masons were not accustomed to saw 
their stones, but hewed their surfaces perfectly smooth and 
