Excerpt from The Great African Island: Chapters on Madagascar; A Popular Account Although many books have been written about Madagascar during the last twenty years, the majority of these have had reference chiefly to the religious history of the country, and to the political and social changes which have followed upon the acceptance of Christianity by the Government and people of the central provinces. And while much has been written about the Hovas, in the interior of Madagascar, little is still known about the numerous tribes inhabiting other portions of the island. In writing the following pages my object has been to supply information of a more general character than is given in most previous works; and especially to arrange in a systematic form numerous interesting facts which have only recently come to light. During the last nine or ten years many journeys have been made in previously little known, or entirely unknown, parts of Madagascar, so that our knowledge of the various tribes inhabiting the island is greatly increased; and every year continual accessions are being made to our information as to the physical geography and geology of the country, its luxuriant flora, its remarkable and exceptional fauna, and as to the origin and divisions, language and customs, superstitions and folk-lore, and reli gions beliefs and practices of the Malagasy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.