CHAP. XII. 
FORMER HUNTING EXPEDITIONS. 
317 
numbers, and in all parts of the island, as one of the few 
names by which the natives designate their whole country 
is Nosindambo, literally, island of wild boars. They are 
often chased and killed by the natives. Part of a wild boar 
had not been an unfrequent dish at the tables of the 
foreign resident at Tamatave, at whose hospitable board I 
was a guest during much of the time that I resided there. 
The hunting of the wild boar, as well as of the wild cattle 
which roam in large herds over the uninhabited parts of the 
country, has been a favourite pursuit with the Nimrods of 
Madagascar from very early times. The crocodile is reported 
to have been the game of the Yazimba, or earliest inhabitants 
of the country. At the time when Drury resided on the 
island, viz. 150 years ago, hunting the wild cattle and wild 
boars was the occasional occupation and amusement of the 
daring and adventurous chiefs of that part of the island in 
which he resided, and, as the spear was the weapon chiefly 
employed, the sport was far more exciting and perilous than 
it has been of later times, the mere act of slaughtering the 
animals being the least exciting part of the sport. 
The late king Radama occasionally hunted the wild cattle 
and other animals; but his hunting expeditions were more 
like organised military invasions of the territories of these 
denizens of the desert, than ordinary pursuits of the chase, 
and the numbers killed would seem to have surpassed even 
the murderous battues of German sportsmen. Radama some¬ 
times led two or three thousand troops to the chase, and, 
as a portion of these carried fire-arms, the slaughter was 
immense. In an account which I obtained during my visit, 
of one of these hunting expeditions to a region about 100 
miles or more to the west of the capital, in the autumn of 
1825, the writer, a native, states— “And these are the 
animals we obtained in the end of September and beginning 
of October— 
