232 
VISITS TO MADAGASCAR. 
CHAP. IX. 
the popular notion that the snake has the power of exercising 
some mesmeric or other influence through the steady fixing 
of its eye, and that whatever intercepts this gaze breaks as it 
were the charm, and sets the prisoner free. 
Numbers of the people from the adjacent posts came to 
see us during the forenoon of the next day. Amongst them, 
and accompanied by a female attendant, came Botha’s wife, a 
quiet, respectable, grief-stricken woman, apparently about 
forty years of age. After sitting in silence some time, she 
said she came to ask if we could give her any tidings of 
Botha. He had been implicated in the war, and was at that 
time suffering his sentence in the colony. She said she had 
written several times by post, but had received no reply. She 
was told it was believed he was well, and conducting himself 
with propriety, but that probably he had not the means of 
writing to her. She has a son and two daughters, but no 
means of support, all Botha’s land being declared forfeited. 
We were informed that she is highly respected by the people, 
who sympathise with her and allow her to cultivate portions 
of their land for subsistence. 
Amongst others who came was the schoolmistress of 
Buxton, an intelligent and respectable woman, who deplored 
the dispersion of her school, and expressed her hopes that the 
land on which the school stood, and which had been seized, 
would be restored, the building repaired, and the children 
again collected for instruction. The seizure has since been 
declared unlawful, and it is hoped the school will be reopened. 
A few weeks before our arrival the governor had been at the 
settlement: he visited the church and school, and called upon 
the daughters of the late missionary; he has encouraged 
them to persevere with the school, and expressed himself to 
Mr. Green, one of the officers of the church, as pleased with 
what he saw of the efforts of the people to repair the 
devastations of the war. Sir George Grey also, during his 
