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HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
It is not fully known by what means the idea of crucifixion 
as a mode of punishment, was adopted by the Malagasy. 
It is possible that it may have been derived from the 
Arabs, or from Scripture history. In the year 1825, a 
man was condemned to crucifixion who had murdered a 
female for the sake of stealing her child. He carried the 
child for sale to the public market, where the infant was 
recognized, and the murderer detected. He bore his pun¬ 
ishment in the most hardened manner, avenging himself, 
by all the violence he was capable of exercising, upon those 
who dragged him to the place of execution. Not a single 
groan escaped him during the period he was nailed to the 
wood, nor while the cross was fixed upright in the earth. 
The wooden frame used in the place of a cross, resembles 
a gallows. To this the malefactor is nailed while it 
remains flat upon the earth. After which, it is lifted up 
with its miserable burden, and fixed in two holes made in 
the ground for the purpose. Here the sufferer is kept 
until he dies of cold, hunger, or agony. Some criminals, 
after being nailed to the frame, have remained for hours 
for the gaze of the multitude. A fire has oftentimes been 
placed to windward of them, by which they and the cross 
have been consumed together. 
The first criminal who suffered death by crucifixion was 
a man convicted of having aided in the escape of the queen 
to her friends, in 1825. Another suffered the same punish¬ 
ment shortly afterwards, for having stolen, or obtained 
money by false pretences in the name of the king. And 
three others were in the following year crucified and burnt, 
for having wilfully set fire to several houses in the capital, 
and for having, on conviction, avow r ed their intention of 
destroying several others in the same manner. 
Another method of execution is by tying the malefactor 
