ciiAP. x. VISITS OF WELCOME FROM THE NATIVES. 
257 
late hour. From them I now learned that the circumstances 
of my friends in general were favourable; that some from 
the interior, whom on my former visit I had left prostrate 
with the fever, had recovered; while four other valued Chris¬ 
tian friends, some of whom had slept in my house in order 
to be with me during the last night I had passed on the 
shore, and who had accompanied me to the canoe that 
was waiting at the water’s edge on the bright beautiful 
moonlight morning in which I had sailed from Madagascar 
in 1844, had been cut off by fever. They were all in the 
prime of life; two of them men of great promise;—one a re¬ 
markably inquiring, intelligent, and amiable young man, an 
aide-de-camp of the prince, and about twenty-four years of 
age; the other, whom I used to call “ my tall friend,” the 
son-in-law of the governor of an adjacent province, a sort of 
agent of the prince, and to me a most attached and consistent 
Christian friend. He had died of fever in his thirty-third 
year, leaving a widow and family at the capital. 
On the morning after my visit to the governor I rose soon 
after daybreak, but almost before I was dressed friends came 
with tokens of their good-will,—amongst them a chief and his 
wife, followed by a little slave girl, bringing, along with other 
presents, a bottle of sweet new milk; and, as they learned 
that this was peculiarly acceptable, they continued to send it 
every morning so long as I remained at Tamatave. 
I had missed from the governor’s table an officer, who 
during my former visits had always been present on such oc¬ 
casions, and whom I used to call “ my friend in the green 
uniform,” on account of his wearing a coat of green velvet 
richly embroidered with gold lace, and a gold aiguillette. He 
had been one of Eadama’s officers, and was reported to have 
been severe, or even cruel, in war. He filled an office of some 
importance at Tamatave, spoke French with comparative ease, 
and was often at my house. Notwithstanding the report of 
s 
