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VISITS TO MADAGASCAR. 
CHAP. XV. 
“And the eighteen appointed to die, as they sat on the 
ground surrounded by the soldiers, sang the 137th hymn*: 
‘ When I shall die, and leave my friends, 
When they shall weep for me, 
When departed has my life, 
Then I shall be happy.’ 
“ When that hymn was finished, they sang the 154th: — 
‘ When I shall behold Him rejoicing in the heavens,’ &c. 
<c And when tlie sentences were all pronounced, and the 
officer was about to return to the chief authorities, the four 
sentenced to be burned requested him to ask that they might 
be killed first, and then burned. But they were burned 
alive. 
“When the officer was gone, they took those eighteen 
away to put them to death. The fourteen they tied by the 
hands and the feet to long poles, and carried on men’s 
shoulders. And these brethren prayed, and spoke to the 
people, as they were being carried along. And some who 
beheld them, said that their faces were like the faces of 
angels. And when they came to the top of Nampaminarina 
they cast them down, and their bodies were afterwards dragged 
to the other end of the capital, to be burned with the bodies 
of those who were burned alive. 
“ And as they took the four that were to be burned alive 
to the place of execution, these Christians sang the 90th hymn, 
beginning, £ When our hearts are troubled,’ each verse ending 
with, c Then remember us.’ Thus they sang on the road. 
And when they came to Faravohitra, there they burned them, 
fixed betwixt split spars. And there was a rainbow in the 
* The numbers refer to the collection of printed hymns in the native lan¬ 
guage. The translation is verbal and literal, not a metrical rendering of the 
meaning. 
