4 
VISITS TO MADAGASCAE. 
CHAP. I. 
of the idol-keepers, and of the supporters of divination with 
other superstitions of the country, was in a short time re¬ 
stored to its former supremacy. In 1835 the profession of the 
Christian religion by any of the Malagasy was prohibited ; it 
was also required that all Christian hooks, should be given up 
to the government, and in 1836 the missionaries and their 
excellent coadjutors, the Christian artisans, departed from the 
island. 
Eight or nine years afterwards the evasion of the queen’s 
orders, prohibiting the removal of natives from the island, 
greatly irritated the Malagasy government; and the applica¬ 
tion of the native laws to Europeans residing in Madagascar, 
as a means of maintaining native authority, gave offence 
to the foreign traders at Tamatave. The latter appealed 
for assistance to the English Governor at Mauritius and to 
the French Governor at Bourbon; and in June, 1845, one 
English and two French vessels of war went to Tamatave 
to endeavour to adjust the differences existing there. Failing 
to effect this by amicable conference, they employed force, 
fired on the people, burned the town, and landed and at¬ 
tacked the fort. But though they killed and wounded a 
number of the natives, they were ultimately obliged to retire 
to their ships, leaving in the hands of the natives thirteen of 
their number, whose skulls, according to the Malagasy practice, 
were afterwards fixed on poles in front of the fortification 
which they had assailed. 
This aggression, so deeply to be deplored, produced long and 
serious evils. The Malagasy government prohibited the ex¬ 
portation of every article of native produce; and the trade in 
rice and cattle — the latter so important to Mauritius and the 
Isle of Bourbon — was thus destroyed ; and notwithstanding 
the efforts of the English Admiral Dacres, in 1848, and the 
French Admiral Cecile, to restore friendly relations between 
those nations and the Malagasy, all amicable intercourse en¬ 
tirely ceased for a period of eight years. 
