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In our passage, we touched at the island of Madagascar, where, though the inhabitants are naturally fierce and treacherous, & go constantly armed with bows & lances, yet for some time they treated us civily enough; and, in exchange for knives, scisors, and other trifles, they brought us eleven good fat bullocks, which we took partly for present victuals, and the remainder to salt for the ship's use.
Callender evidently did not understand the old Norman expression GENITMENT TEURCHES, which means "nicely ornamented," and translated it by the word that appeared to him more akin in form, TRESSES, hence, "the hair neatly tied up in tresses", which is a characteristic custom of the native women of the island of Madagascar. But this is a small matter.
When I worked many years ago on this subject, I doubted much whether the now-called Palearctic and Nearctic regions ought to be separated; and I determined if I made another region that it should be Madagascar. I have therefore been able to appreciate the value of your evidence on these points. What progress Palæontology has made during the last 20 years!
And to help him live up to it he has surrounded himself with a parcel of adventurers as rascally as himself: a Colonel Erhaupt who was dropped from a German regiment, and who is a Colonel only by the favor of the Queen of Madagascar; a retired croupier named Barrat; and a fallen angel called Kalonay, a fellow of the very best blood in Europe and with the very worst morals.
After returning to the Isle of France, where the governor still kept up his hostility, and opposed him by every means in his power, he set sail with about three hundred men for Madagascar. He landed at Antongil Bay, where he was well received by the chiefs, but he at first was subject to a good deal of opposition from the natives generally.
On his way he picked up a couple of like kind with himself two sloops off Madagascar. With these he sailed away to the coast of India, and for a time his name was lost in the obscurity of uncertain history. But only for a time, for suddenly it flamed out in a blaze of glory.
If the hibernal lethargy be observed, both in cold-blooded and in hot-blooded animals, we shall be less surprised to learn, that these two classes furnish alike examples of a summer-sleep. In the same manner as the crocodiles of South America, the tanrecs, or Madagascar hedgehogs, in the midst of the torrid zone, pass three months of the year in lethargy.
The weather of the Mozambique Channel was fairly good, although subject to electric storms of the most terrible aspect, but perfectly harmless. On the second evening after rounding Cape St. Mary, we were proceeding, as usual, under very scanty sail, rather enjoying the mild, balmy air, scent-laden, from Madagascar.
What slave-trading there is at present is by Arabs and Indians. They convey the slaves in dhows from the mainland to Madagascar, Arabia, or southern Persia, and to the Island of Pemba, which lies north of Zanzibar, and only fifteen miles from the mainland.
Round a camp-fire one will hear tales of Africa, New Guinea, New Zealand, Australia, America from Alaska to the Horn, Madagascar, and other strange countries that would be a mine of information to a writer of books of adventure tales told in the main with truth and accuracy, and in the quiet, unostentatious manner of the habitual digger to whom poverty, riches, and hardships come all in their turn as a matter of course.
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