CHAP. V. 
PRECAUTIONS AGAINST CHOLERA. 
133 
symptom of indisposition was observable when I left; and 
now I learned that within a fortnight after my departure, 
father, mother, and two dear children, were numbered with 
the dead. Mr. Banks, the pious and devoted military chap¬ 
lain, with many others whom I knew, had been swept away 
by the fearful visitation, and mourning and desolation seemed 
to fill the land. 
The next morning officers from the governor came to say, 
that accounts of the fearful ravages of the cholera at Mau¬ 
ritius, at the time when I left, had been sent from Tamatave 
to the capital. That, on that account, I could not go up to 
Antananarivo; and that nothing which had come from Mau¬ 
ritius was to be taken to the capital. So great was the 
alarm created by the representations given of the virulent 
and fatal nature of this disease, that the system of relays of 
messengers organised by the government was employed, and 
the message from the capital was delivered in five days after¬ 
wards in Tamatave, though the distance by the ordinary route 
is three hundred miles. Indeed, so determined was the go¬ 
vernment to prevent, if possible, the introduction of this 
dreaded scourge, that a proclamation was issued the following 
day ordering that all articles of trade which had been landed 
from the ships should be exposed to the sun and wind for 
the space of forty days; that all the dollars received in pay¬ 
ment for the cargoes of bullocks which had been sold should 
be buried in the sand forty days, in order to secure the 
removal of any contagion which might attach to them; and 
that all vessels arriving at any port of Madagascar, from 
whatever part of the world they might come, should be put 
into quarantine for the same period. A vessel soon after¬ 
wards came in from the Sechelles, but was obliged to leave 
without supplies before the time of quarantine had expired ; 
and another vessel from the Cape, with horses on board, was 
subject to the same restrictions. 
