A naturalist in Madagascar / A record of observation, experiences, and impressions made during a period of over fifty years' intimate association with the natives and study of the animal & vegetable life of the island

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

THE great African island of Madagascar has become well known to Europeans during the last half-century, and especially since the year 1895, when it was made a colony of France. During that fifty years many books—the majority of these in the French language—have been written about the island and its people; what was formerly an almost unknown country has been traversed by Europeans in all directions; its physical geography is now clearly understood; since the French occupation it has been scientifically surveyed, and a considerable part of the interior has been laid down with almost as much detail as an English ordnance map. But although very much information has been collected with regard to the country, the people, the geology, and the animal and vegetable productions of Madagascar, there has hitherto been no attempt, at least in the English language, to collect these many scattered notices of the Malagasy fauna and flora, and to present them to the public in a readable form.

In several volumes of a monumental work that has been in progress for many years past, written and edited by M. Alfred Grandidier,[1] the natural history and the botany of the island are being exhaustively described in scientific fashion; but these great quartos are in the French language, while their costly character renders them unknown books to the general reader. It is the object of the following pages to describe, in as familiar and popular a fashion as may be, many of the most interesting facts connected with the exceptional animal life of Madagascar, and with its forestal and other vegetable productions. During nearly fifty years’ connection with this country the writer has travelled over it in many directions, and while his chief time and energies have of course been given to missionary effort, he has always taken a deep interest in the living creatures which inhabit the island, as well as in its luxuriant flora, and has always been collecting information about them. The facts thus obtained are embodied in the following pages.

It is probably well known to most readers of this book that a railway now connects Tamatave, the chief port of the east coast, with Antanànarìvo, the capital, which is about a third of the way across the island. So that the journey from the coast to the interior, which, up to the year 1899, used to take from eight to ten days, can now be accomplished in one day. Besides this, good roads now traverse the country in several directions, so that wheeled vehicles can be used; and on some of these a service of motor cars keeps up regular communication with many of the chief towns and the capital.

But we shall not, in these pages, have much to do with these modern innovations, for a railway in Madagascar is very much like a railway in Europe. Our journeys will mostly be taken by the old-fashioned native conveyance, the filanjàna or light palanquin, carried by four stout and trusty native bearers. We shall thus not be whirled through the most interesting portion of our route, catching only a momentary glimpse of many a beautiful scene. We can get down and walk, whenever we like, to observe bird or beast or insect, to gather flower or fern or lichen or moss, or to take a rock specimen, things utterly impracticable either by railway or motor car, and not very easy to do in any wheeled conveyance. Our object will be, not to get through the journey as fast as possible, but to observe all that is worth notice during the journey. We shall therefore, in this style of travel, not stay in modern hotels, but in native houses, notwithstanding their drawbacks and discomforts; and thus we shall see the Malagasy as they are, and as their ancestors have been for generations gone by, almost untouched by European influence, and so be able to observe their manners and customs, and learn something of their ideas, their superstitions, their folk-lore, and the many other ways in which they differ from ourselves.

Let us, however, first try to get a clear notion about this great island, and to realise how large a country it is. Take a fair-sized map of Madagascar, and we see that it rises like some huge sea-monster from the waters of the Indian Ocean; or, to use another comparison, how its outline is very like the sole—the left-hand one—of a human foot. As we usually look at the island in connection with a map of Africa, it appears as a mere appendage to the great “Dark Continent”; and it is difficult to believe that it is really a thousand miles long, and more than three hundred miles broad, with an area of two hundred and thirty thousand square miles, thus exceeding that of France, Belgium and Holland all put together.[2] Before the year 1871 all maps of Madagascar, as regards its interior, were pure guesswork. A great backbone of mountains was shown, with branches on either side, like a huge centipede. But it is now clear that, instead of these fancy pictures, there is an extensive elevated region occupying about two-thirds of the island to the east and north, leaving a wide stretch of low country to the west and south; and as the watershed is much nearer the east than the west of the island, almost all the chief rivers flow, not into the Indian Ocean, but into the Mozambique Channel. When we add that a belt of dense forest runs all along the east side of Madagascar, and is continued, with many breaks, along the western side, and that scores of extinct volcanoes are found in several districts of the interior, we shall have said all that is necessary at present as to the physical geography. Many more details of this, as well as of the geology, will come under our notice as we travel through the country in various directions.