Thirty years in Madagascar

‘Truth springeth out of the earth; and righteousness hath looked down from heaven.’—Psalm lxxxv. 11.

Our enforced sojourn in the capital for the first four months of the year 1872, while in some respects a privation, afforded me more time to work at the language. I was also able, while there, to buy most of the wood for our future manse, to get brick-moulds, and agree with a master bricklayer for building it. Many other things were also arranged which it would have been difficult to negotiate from Fìhàonana.

We started back for Vònizòngo in May, and as we thought it would be easier for my wife and the baby to go as far as possible—about halfway—by canoe (along with some friends who were travelling west for a holiday), we adopted this course; but with such results to both, from exposure on the water to the unclouded sun for six hours, that we never repeated the experiment. I had sent the wood for the manse down the river by canoe, and wished to see where it was stored.

At the end of the voyage, we had our first and last real difficulty with the palanquin-bearers during thirty years. After eating all I had provided for them, they coolly told me that as their companions (who were to carry our friends to their destination—a few miles from where we landed) were not going on to Vònizòngo, they declined to keep to their contract and take us there, and demanded prepayment for carrying the empty palanquins from Antanànarìvo. As I refused to accede to their preposterous demands, they took advantage of my absence when seeing after my wood, to set off on their return to the capital, carrying off my palanquin, which they had, however, to return a fortnight later with a humble apology. The leader of this conspiracy I had to encounter and conquer, on our way to the coast in 1879, after which we were good friends.

Fortunately I had sent to Fìhàonana for eight men to meet us, in case porters enough from the capital, willing to go to Vònizòngo, were not to be had. These men had to carry my wife, two children, and the nurse twenty miles. I had to tramp on foot. Four men carried our eldest child and the nurse, took them across the streams and swamps, and then returned for me. Our good friend Mr. Cameron, who was making a trip to Vònizòngo in the interests of geography to take bearings for a map of Madagascar, kindly let my wife have two of his eight bearers, and thus they reached Fìhàonana by sunset, but we did not arrive until nearly ten o’clock; still our reception was well worth all the trouble we had experienced.

On the arrival of my wife and Mr. Cameron at Fìhàonana, they told of the plight in which we had been left. Razàka and the young chief called the men of the village together, and told them how we were placed, and they volunteered to come and meet us, with a supply of torches made of dried grass to light them on their way. We saw the flaring light on the hills miles in front of us, and could not understand what the moving mass of fire marching towards us meant until we came within shouting distance. We were carried into Fìhàonana in right royal style, amid the blaze of torches and the shoutings of the people. The whole village had turned out, and the shouting, hurrahing, and joyous yelling, with the singing and hand-clapping of the women and children with which we were welcomed, was a thing never to be forgotten.

A fine site for the manse was secured on the rising ground to the east of the village of Fìhàonana. A very large village had formerly stood there, and so there was a fosse and embankment round it. The chief and his brother made it over to me, declining any rent. I told them, however, that there must be rent, however nominal, in order that I might make an agreement with the government for it on behalf of the Society, and then they agreed to the nominal sum of four shillings a year. When the agreement came to be signed by the then Hova foreign secretary—a ‘haughty Hova,’ thinly veneered with a profession of Christianity—he took the chiefs to task for allowing me to have such a site so ridiculously cheap. This led to an animated interchange of ideas between him and me. Ultimately it was agreed that the ground-rent should be twelve shillings a year. For that small sum an enclosed site of five acres was secured for forty years to the London Missionary Society. There I built a manse, a large school-house, and a smaller one for girls. Afterwards another dwelling-house and school were erected there. But, alas! in 1897 all that remained of these buildings were seized by the French, and no compensation has ever been paid for them.

With the moulds brought from the capital, I soon taught the people how to make sun-dried bricks. The chiefs and pastors of the district offered to have all the bricks required made for nothing; but having strong views on the subject of slavery, I asked them: ‘Will you hire and pay men to make them or will you simply make your slaves do it?’ Of course they said they would set their slaves to make the bricks, so I felt I must decline their generous offer. At this they seemed astonished and hurt.

My action in this matter was a mistake. I ought to have accepted their proffered aid, and then given their slaves the money afterwards paid for making the bricks, in the form of ‘presents’ wherewith to buy salt and beef, to fit them for their extra work. But we have all to buy our experience.

One morning I sent for the men who professed to be equal to making the bricks I required. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘I want 200,000 bricks (made); how much per thousand will you make them for?’

‘Well,’ they said, ‘you are a good man who has left his home, relatives, and native land to come to teach us.’

‘Yes, yes,’ I said, ‘that’s all right, but never mind those trifles at present, we can discuss them at any time, they will keep, let’s discuss the bricks now. How much will you make them for per thousand?’

‘Well,’ they answered, ‘as you are that good man we mentioned, we will make them for you for four shillings a thousand.’ That would have been $200 = £40, but then equal to £200 to them.

‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘I am much obliged, but I can only give sixpence per thousand.’

‘Only sixpence a thousand,’ they said, with well-simulated astonishment.

‘Yes,’ I replied.

‘We won’t make them for that,’ they said.

‘Well,’ I answered, ‘I think you had better go home and reconsider your demand for four shillings a thousand; for you know very well that such wages are simply ridiculous, and when you have come to your senses, and are prepared to be reasonable, come back and we will talk the matter over.’

They went away, but returned the following week to offer to make the bricks for two shillings and sixpence a thousand.

‘No,’ I said, ‘sixpence per thousand.’

Away they went for another week, and by that time they had come down to one shilling and sixpence per thousand.

‘No,’ I replied again, ‘sixpence per thousand’; but I added: ‘How foolish all this is on your part; you keep on haggling, first saying four shillings per thousand, then two shillings and sixpence, and now one shilling and sixpence. Now, as I don’t wish to be hard on you, and I want this haggling brought to an end, and the work begun, if you come down one sixpence I will go up one.’

‘That’s it, sir,’ they said, and so we struck a bargain for one shilling a thousand.

I expected to have to pay tenpence or one shilling a thousand—although, if I could have held out, I might have got them for my first offer—but if I had offered one shilling I might have had to go up to one shilling and sixpence. As it is only during the dry season that bricks can be made and houses built, I had to raise my offer to get them to set to work.

But perhaps some good sensitive soul may be thinking, ‘The interests of the Society are all very well, but what about the interests of the poor natives?’ Well, my friend, you may with confidence leave the interests of the natives in the hands of their best friends, the missionaries, as few of them are likely to take a mean advantage of their charge. But even if they were, with few exceptions, most natives I have met with may be left to look after their own interests; they are quite equal to that. But to show I was taking no mean advantage of my people I may state that, up to the time of our settlement at Fìhàonana and for long after, a porter had to carry eighty pounds of salt from Andrìba to Fìhàonana—a three days’ journey—for threepence! My brick-makers, by working morning and forenoon, could easily make two shillings a week.

They could live and keep a wife and family on sixpence a week in those happy days. Rice in the husk, in the harvest season—when most people who had not large rice-fields of their own laid in a stock of rice for the year—could be bought for a penny a measure in Vònizòngo, and two measures would serve a fairly large family for a week. Since 1896 rice has never been under one shilling a measure. It has been as high even as three shillings in some parts. Starvation was formerly almost unknown in Madagascar. The men who made my bricks had very few expenses except for food; for their tailor’s, draper’s, hatter’s, shoemaker’s and upholsterer’s bills were very light!

The master bricklayer failed us. He sent some professed bricklayers in his place, but if they were bricklayers they were surely the poorest who ever laid bricks. They were either ignorant of the use of the plumb-rule, or were too lazy, or in too great a hurry to get the walls rushed up to use it, with the result that they built the walls off the plumb. In my anxiety to overtake the work I foolishly kept on all my classes and district duties. I ought to have stood beside these men and seen every brick laid; but I regarded this as a sheer waste of time, with so much teaching, preaching, and other mission work to be done. Those who gave up all their district work for months, while their houses were being built, acted wisely. The result was that I would often return home, after an exhausting day, to find that the walls had been run up several inches off the plumb.

To have our bedrooms as far from the ground as possible, for health’s sake, the manse was built double-storied, as is most desirable in a malarious district. It was the first two-storied house built in that part of the island, and as its walls rose they caused much talk among the people. At last Razàka came to ask me if I quite understood what I was doing. There had never been such a high house built there, and the people were afraid it might fall or be blown down by the frequent hurricanes. I assured him that I quite understood what I was about, and that there was no fear of the house falling or being blown down. It stood all the hurricanes we had, some of them very severe, and might have lasted for another thirty years, but for its being burnt down in 1897.

On the coasts of Madagascar, and for about half or two-thirds of the way up to Antanànarìvo, the native huts are built of a framework of poles and bamboo, filled in with bulrushes, and roofed with the leaves of the so-called ‘traveller’s tree,’ a kind of palm. In Central Madagascar the huts are built of layers of mud, one layer being allowed to dry before the next is laid on. The houses are built of sun-dried brick. In many cases now—especially in the capital—the outside walls are of burnt, and the inside of sun-dried brick. The roofs were thatched with flags from the swamps, or with rank grass from the moors or the stream sides. All houses in the capital have now to be tiled for fear of fire. We built our house of sun-dried brick. There is no frost in Madagascar, so well-built houses, with verandah round, if the roof is kept in repair and the outside walls are replastered from time to time, will stand for fifty years.

We plastered the walls of our houses outside and in with mud, mixed with a substance remotely related to ‘attar of roses’! Then we covered them with cheap wall-paper, glazed the windows, and so made nice, comfortable, homelike houses. By far the nicest, most convenient, and most comfortable house we ever had in Madagascar was the manse built at Fìhàonana, which cost only £250, and £40 of that even went for carriage of material. It was found fault with in later years by a young, up-to-date missionary because it was not aesthetic enough! In those days we did not trouble ourselves about aesthetics, we thought more of health and convenience. The idea of a missionary set down among a heathen people concerning himself about aesthetics is quite refreshing, almost as refreshing as the remark of the man who said district itinerating could never be properly done until there were railways, and so gave up attempting to do it!

All government work—and much for members of the government and upper officers—was formerly done in Madagascar by a kind of feudal service called fànompòana. As it was often very severe, it was heartily hated, and was generally got through as quickly as possible. Thus a tendency to scamp work became almost second nature with most workmen, unless strictly watched, even when working for wages. I got some carpenters who were most unsatisfactory. Not only was their work scamped, but wood and tools disappeared. I resolved to catch them red-handed before bringing a charge against them. One day I suddenly appeared on the scene, when they had no suspicion that I was in the neighbourhood, and found them hanging the room doors. They had made the screw-holes for fixing the hinges, with a gimlet so large that they could push the screws in with their thumbs! These doors, made of hard and heavy wood, must have proved awkward for any one on whom they might fall.

When I appeared on the scene the screw-driver was seized, and a pretence was made of sending the screws home, which, of course, seemed very hard to do. When they had finished I said: ‘Yes, that is very fine, now give me the screw-driver.’ I then turned the screws and picked them out with my fingers. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘you have been cheating me for weeks, and scamping your work. I can’t stand any more of this. Go home. I give you an hour in which to leave the village, and if you have not left by that time I shall write to the prime minister, tell him the whole story, and leave him to deal with you. Apply to him for the wages due to you, and when he applies to me I will send the money. I hope this will prove a warning to you, and teach you not to cheat or scamp your work for the future, but to do honest work for honest wages.’

They left the village within half an hour, and no application was ever made to me for arrears of wages. Of course they spread false reports about me and my treatment of workmen. This led to a long delay before I could get carpenters to come from the capital to work for me; but, at last, I was so fortunate as to secure a little man who had something almost akin to genius for carpentry. He worked for me at various times for twenty-eight years. My troubles with these men were thus a blessing in disguise. Without them I should never have found my born carpenter Andrìantàvy. He was one of the pastors of a very small church in the neighbourhood of the capital, and a most trustworthy man.

The Sabbath services were always the most helpful, whether at Fìhàonana or out in the district, as one had a sense of freedom and the feeling that nothing was being neglected in order that they might be held.

The conduct of my bricklayers, and the want of carpenters for several weeks, ran me far too near the end of the dry season with my manse unroofed. Had the rains come on while it was roofless, my ceilings would have been brought down and the walls greatly damaged. As it was, we only escaped by two hours; for the thatching was finished at four o’clock, and at six we had the first rains of the season. In order to accomplish this, however, I had to hire forty men, and give up all other work to superintend them and see that the thatching was properly carried through under my own eye.

Church and manse building, even in the mission field, is very prosaic work, with little of the rainbow of romance about it, but it has to be done. In our case it was a most serious undertaking, for we were 100 miles from the ‘forest,’ and all the wood had to be brought the whole distance, with the exception of some twenty miles, on the shoulders of men from there. The building of our manse was perhaps a more serious affair than it ought to have been. In addition to all the difficulties of the situation, I, in common with most missionaries, knew nothing about house-building. I had never had to do with the building of a house in my life, except a rabbit-hutch, when I was a lad, to which an old tea-chest lent itself. I knew a little about some branches of practical mechanics. This was of more use to me than much other knowledge to acquire which I had spent a good deal of time, and not a little ‘midnight oil’; but of house-building I was wholly ignorant. In the circumstances I had just to buckle to and make the best of things. If a man only does this he will be astonished to find what he may accomplish under God’s blessing.

I have thus dwelt a little on some of the kinds of work which it falls to a missionary opening a new station to carry out, to show, if that be still required, that, as Dr. Livingstone says: ‘A missionary is not merely a dumpy man with a Bible under his arm,’ as many good people suppose him to be. The true missionary is a many-sided man, who must be prepared, and will be, to be anything or nothing that will help forward his work, without any fear of its being beneath his dignity. My experience fully bears out Dr. Livingstone’s statement that: ‘If young missionaries for Africa would spend one-half the time they have to spend over Latin verbs, in learning how to make a wheelbarrow, or mend a waggon, it would be infinitely more useful to them afterwards.’ At the same time, it is well to keep in mind, that what may be very suitable for one part of the mission field may not be so for another. A university training would be the best preparation for some fields. If his missionary enthusiasm will not carry a young man through a university course, it cannot be of the right kind, and would not carry him far in the mission field.

There is little that is sentimental or romantic about the erection of mission buildings, and yet they have a decided value of their own in showing the natives among whom he is destined to labour, that the ‘white teacher’ has come to stay, and that he means work. This most useful, necessary, and trying work is, strange to say, often one of the most thankless tasks that a missionary can take in hand. A man may be thankful if he gets off without censure for ‘erecting so many buildings at his station,’ even when he has found among his personal friends most of the money for their erection. From some fellow labourers he may incur blame for having so much to do with ‘mere secular affairs.’ Nothing which ought to be done should be regarded as merely secular, and least of all where it is to be a means of extending Christianity. ‘Christianity touches everything, or it touches nothing.’ The man who is not prepared to be anything and everything—a hewer of wood or a drawer of water—or who has not got above regarding this or that kind of work as being beneath his ‘abilities,’ ‘culture’ or ‘dignity’ to take part in or do, ought not to go to the mission field. ‘When St. Boniface landed in Britain he came with the Gospel in one hand and a carpenter’s rule in the other; and from England he afterwards passed over into Germany, carrying thither the art of building.’ It may be easy for one class of workers to look askance at another, because the circumstances of the latter may compel them for a time to be a good deal ‘among bricks and mortar.’ It is, however, quite possible to serve God and His cause even in such lowly work. In saying these things I am fighting no phantoms.

Of course things have altered, and have been very much improved in some respects during the past quarter of a century, even to the country missionary. In our time he had not only to be physician and dentist to his own family, but also to some 10,000 people. He was not only preacher, teacher, and guide to the churches and people, but amateur architect, builder, bookseller, and general adviser to his district on almost all subjects; in fact, director of practically everything, and for some years actually judge of the divorce court! Indeed there fell to him too much work of all kinds, much of which he ought not to have had to do; but then there was no one else to do it, and he had to take it up and do his best. Work under these circumstances in country districts, in these early days at least, was the most laborious, worrying, and wearying I have ever known. It was never finished, but its very difficulties and drawbacks, in my opinion, made it all the more elevated, enviable, and honourable.

I have mentioned the divorce court, or rather, the cases of divorce which came before our monthly church meetings, and on which we had to pronounce judgement. It was a most disagreeable duty which we were thus compelled to take up. There was one satisfaction about it: our judgements were seldom disputed or departed from. They were almost always loyally carried out. During the earlier years of our first term of service we seldom had three church meetings in succession without having a case of divorce to settle. But such has been the progress even in that direction, that I had only one bad case to deal with during the past fifteen years.

One day one of the best and most godly of our native pastors came to me in great sorrow. His daughter had been married—against her father’s will, I think—for some years to a petty chief of some means, but no character. He had tired of her, or had seen some one else that he fancied, and so, to get rid of her, he brought a charge of infidelity against her. She denied the charge most vehemently, but as I was then in charge of West Vònizòngo, in addition to my own district, her father came and asked me if I would, as a personal favour to him, go into the case privately first, and see where the truth lay. I agreed to do so, and on the day appointed he, his daughter, her husband, their relations, and a few friends came to the manse, and we went into the case. I had little difficulty in seeing almost from the first that it was a trumped-up charge. Few Malagasy can stand cross-examination; they soon contradict themselves. After I had quite satisfied myself that the charge was false, I took the husband and wife into my study to have a private expostulation with him.

‘Now,’ I said, ‘I am quite convinced that you are bringing a false charge against your wife.’

‘Indeed he is,’ she said; ‘I would sooner die than disgrace my father and friends by such conduct.’

‘It is very easy for you,’ I added to the husband, ‘to bear false witness against your wife, and so deceive us by lies; but how will it be when you have to face those lies at the judgement-seat of God?’

He was startled for a moment, but soon recovered himself, and stuck to his charge. When we rejoined the others, I said, ‘I feel quite satisfied that this man is bringing a false charge against his wife, but, as he holds to it, we must probe the affair to the bottom.’ I asked him if he had any witnesses, and he named some. I caused them to be summoned. I again turned to him and asked, ‘Who is the other culprit, do you know him?’ He answered that he did not, that he was a petty chief from the north. I asked, ‘Would you know him again if you saw him?’ He replied that he would not. ‘That,’ I said, ‘is rather unfortunate for you, because you must find him and bring him before me, as we must get to the bottom of this business.’ He replied that he was not going to trouble himself hunting for him or bringing him before me. We might seek him if we liked, but he would not. ‘But,’ I said, ‘the matter cannot be settled in that way, it is far too serious. You know that, for the time being, we are “father and mother” to both districts of Vònizòngo.’ He replied that he did. ‘Then,’ I said, ‘in virtue of that, your wife is our daughter, and as we believe her to be quite innocent of the charges you bring against her, we mean to stand by her and have her proved innocent. I give you a month to seek for that petty chief, and bring him before me; but if you fail, I shall write to the prime minister to ask him, as a personal favour, for a sergeant and six soldiers to go with you to help you to find that man; because if he is still alive and in the island he must be found and brought before me.’

The man looked at me with astonishment and terror, and if he had been a European he would have turned deathly pale; but, as it was, his colour became something between a green and an ashy grey hue, and when he had found his tongue it was to confess that the whole charge was false!

The thought of meeting his falsehoods at the judgement-seat of God had no terrors for him (although, poor fellow, he was nearer eternity than he or any of us thought, for he died within three months); but to face the prime minister was too serious a matter. That was an unusually serious case, but it will help to give some idea of the work which we had to undertake.

As far as is known none of the tribes in Madagascar were ever cannibals. The Hovas in particular would have been the last to dream of hòman’ òlona, cannibalism in any form. They regard it as the most hideous and revolting practice conceivable. Their great respect for the dead, the care they take of the corpse, and the fine family tombs they build, all point in the opposite direction. The horrors of cannibalism, as known in New Guinea and on the Congo, were utterly unknown in Madagascar. But this, notwithstanding, all the tribes in the island—including the Hovas, the ablest and most advanced in civilization of them all, and until the advent of the French the dominant tribe—had sunk to a most revolting state of moral degradation. This is still the condition of the majority of the other tribes. Most of the crimes in that long black list, which the Apostle Paul brings against the Corinthians, might have been brought against the tribes in Madagascar, even against the Hovas, with the sentence, ‘Such were some of you.’ So that if missionaries had done nothing more for the Malagasy than raise some of those tribes—the Hovas in particular—to a platform of common decency, and inspire them with the desire for higher and better things than they had ever known, it was a work well worth doing. But the Gospel has done much more for the Hovas than this. It has made thousands of them ‘new creatures in Christ Jesus.’

When Christianity was first introduced to Madagascar, and for many years after, the Malagasy might have been said to have been perfectly destitute of spiritual instincts, and hence the reception by them of spiritual mysteries, not to say spiritual truth, was almost impossible. Their moral natures, their spiritual instincts and conscience had almost to be created or recreated. The progress which Christianity made during the fifteen years that the first missionaries were among them, and as the result of their labours, was truly astonishing. Persecution and martyrdom only rooted the faith more firmly in the hearts of the faithful few, and spread it among others. Hundreds were thus led to inquire about that ‘faith’ for which their fellow countrymen and women were prepared to die rather than renounce. Thus by the time the idols were burned in 1869, and the queen, prime minister, and government professed their adhesion to Christianity, a great change had come over the minds of a large number of the people in Central Madagascar with regard to the ‘new religion,’ as also in their attitude towards it. Still, in both respects the change was very superficial, and could hardly have been expected to have been anything else.

The Christianity of thousands who professed it, when the queen did, was but a thin veneer over their heathenism or semi-heathenism. Christianity had become the religion of the queen and government, and thus became the professed religion of the great mass of the people in Imèrina, some of the outlying provinces, and most of the Hova stations among the other tribes. Christianity was professed publicly in many cases, while idolatry and the ‘working of the oracle’ were practised in private. Even after the majority of the people in the central provinces had built churches, worshipped in them, and become church members, heathen practices lingered among them, and died hard, as they always do. In many cases church membership was not regarded as incompatible with moral laxity, and hence suspension from church fellowship was painfully frequent. But there was nothing strange or astonishing in such a state of things. It was only history repeating itself.

As I have already said, mission work in Madagascar has always suffered in some measure from its very success. It has lacked in depth from its great extension. Hence individual dealing with candidates for church membership was almost an impossibility. During the first rush into the then existing churches, and into those that were formed just after the idols were burned, the work of the missionaries then in the island was difficult in the extreme. They could not overtake a tenth of the work that suddenly came upon them. There were so many pressing duties, so many village churches and preaching stations to superintend.

Then, again, it was most difficult to get at the real state of the candidates for church fellowship, even when the missionary could examine them, as they simply acquiesced in all you said, and answered ‘yes’ to all your questions, even when the one ‘yes’ contradicted the other. Thousands accepted Christianity as they accepted the queen and the Malagasy government. Many at the burning of the idols said, ‘In the days of the old queen all who prayed to Jesus Christ were put to death; but now the queen herself, the prime minister, and the members of the government pray to Him, and if we don’t pray also perhaps we may be punished.’ So little did they know about Christianity and its teachings, and how could they have known? They simply took to ‘the praying’ and worshipping on the Sabbaths as to a new form of fànompòana, ‘government service.’ It is much to be thankful for that this ignorance and these unworthy motives were overruled for good. Thousands who, if they did not go to church to laugh, only went to do their fànompòana as they thought, became praying people indeed. Others got into the habit of attending church on the Sabbath, gradually became interested in the services, and ultimately got good. They met with the Lord of the services, and now they take rank among the most devoted and zealous of His servants.

I called on many of the squire-pastors and had long talks with them, and after thanking them for what they had done for their churches—and some of them had really done a great deal—I would say: ‘You are an old man now, and not able to attend the classes for the pastors, nor the “union meetings” at the capital, and might not get much good even if you did. We must also have a day-school here, the children gathered in, the people instructed, visited, and a new church built, and you are not equal to all that. Now don’t you think it would be best for you to retire from the active duties of the pastorate, and become honorary pastor, and that we should get a younger man elected in your place? You would have the honour, and he would have the work. Don’t you think that would be best?’ In some cases I got them to retire, but in others I could not get them to move. I had to accept the inevitable and make the best of it.

In one distant church of eighty members I only found four whose religious knowledge seemed to fit them for fellowship; and yet, up to their light, they appeared devout. One could do little except pity and pray for such, and go on instructing them. I found the ignorance very gross in some cases. For example, in answer to the question, ‘What must we do to be saved?’ I was told in one case that we must go to church, be baptized, and receive the Lord’s Supper; in another, that we could buy salvation in the market; and in a third, that we must sin in order to be saved! I mention this to give some idea of the darkness of the heathen mind, and the density of ignorance that has often to be overcome. This was what we found even in Vònizòngo when we began work there; but we had a very different state of things by the time we left.