478 
HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
ordeal is put in requisition. This is especially the case 
with members of the royal family,* the judges, and those of 
high rank and property. Sometimes fifty or a hundred 
slaves are compelled to drink it on these occasions, and of 
those perhaps one-tenth, on the average, fall victims, dying 
by the operation of the tangena as a poison, and as many 
more are perhaps proved to be guilty by not ejecting the 
three pieces of skin. With regard to the fate of the latter, 
a difference exists, arising out of the different situation of 
their owners. Should the slaves happen to belong to a 
member of the royal family, and are found guilty, they 
must die;—if the tangena do not kill them, the hand of 
violence must. But in other cases, though convicted, their 
lives are spared. Their owners usually send them to a 
distant market, and there sell them. This may in part 
arise from motives of humanity, but chiefly, perhaps, from 
the wish not to lose property, each slave being, perhaps, 
worth from twenty to forty dollars. In a word, free people, 
in all cases, if convicted, must die; slaves, in all cases, may 
be sold, excepting those attached to members of the royal 
family. 
Should the sovereign himself be ill, not only the slaves 
who wait on him, but all in personal attendance, are liable 
to be put to the same test. An instance in point occurred 
a few years ago. Radama was ill. A senior judge, devoutly 
attached to the tangena, and other national customs, 
required that all who attended the king should take the 
ordeal, and among them were Prince Rateffe, Verkey, and 
* In 1822, about fifty female attendants of the king’s second sister drank 
the tangena, in consequence of her being near the period of her confine¬ 
ment, and suspecting that she had been bewitched. It happened in this 
case (and it was a remarkable circumstance) none died. Query, Might not 
some secret orders have been given to administer a less quantity to each 
than usual ? 
