388 
HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
similarly circumstanced, to find resources which might 
satisfy the cravings of the mind, and allay the feverishness 
of a bewildered imagination, which might arm them with 
fortitude amidst the apprehensions of mysterious and unde¬ 
fined evils, and inspire them with hope in the prospect of 
some unknown and equally undefined futurity. The opera¬ 
tion of an invisible agency, or of different agencies, they 
see demonstrated in the phenomena, the order, and the 
formation of the universe around them. Yet strangers to 
the sublime idea of a superintending Providence, and 
almost equally strangers to any rational and philosophical 
explanation of daily occurring natural phenomena, they 
promptly attribute every thing to the influence of charms 
(ody), which their imaginations invent, possessing qualities 
and virtues adequate to the production of all the varied 
effects either witnessed or experienced. 
Still, while a belief in the efficacy of these potent charms 
seems to constitute one of the principal articles of their 
creed, it does not constitute the whole. It forms an im¬ 
portant part of the Malagasy system of belief, but it is only 
a part. It is, in the minds of these credulous people, inti¬ 
mately associated with a conviction of the infallibility of 
the sikidy, or divination, by which the charm, according to 
Its particular kind or design, in any given case, must be 
decided. And this again is as closely blended with a belief 
in some superior power, whose will or fiat is ascertained by 
the operation of the diviner’s art—an art, by which, from 
premises avowedly laid in chances, a process is worked out 
by rule, and an indubitable certainty educed as the result. 
Yet as firmly as the devout believers in the Koran adhere to 
the paralyzing doctrine of fate, do the Malagasy tenaciously 
maintain their “ vintana”—a stern, unbending, fixed, im¬ 
mutable destiny; and after all they have pleaded for their 
