IT was on a bright morning in September, 1863, that I first came in sight of Madagascar. In those days there was no service of steamers, either of the “Castle” or the “Messageries Maritimes” lines, touching at any Madagascar port, and the passage from Mauritius had to be made in what were termed “bullockers.” These vessels were small brigs or schooners which had been condemned for ordinary traffic, but were still considered good enough to convey from two to three hundred oxen from Tamatave to Port Louis or Réunion. It need hardly be said that the accommodation on board these ships was of the roughest, and the food was of the least appetising kind. A diet of cabbage, beans and pumpkin led one of my friends to describe the menu of the bullocker as “the green, the brown, and the yellow.” Happily, the voyage to Madagascar was usually not very long, and in my case we had a quick and pleasant passage of three days only; but I hardly hoped that daylight on Wednesday morning would reveal the country on which my thoughts had been centred for several weeks past; so it was with a strange feeling of excitement that soon after daybreak I heard the captain calling to me down the hatchway: “We are in sight of land!” Not many minutes elapsed before I was on deck and looking with eager eyes upon the island in which eventually most of my life was to be spent. We were about five miles from the shore, running under easy sail to the northward, until the breeze from the sea should set in and enable us to enter the harbour of Tamatave.

There was no very striking feature in the scene—no towering volcanic peaks, as at Mauritius and Aden, yet it was not without beauty. A long line of blue mountains in the distance, covered with clouds; a comparatively level plain extending from the hills to the sea, green and fertile with cotton and sugar and rice plantations; while the shore was fringed with the tall trunks and feathery crowns of the cocoanut-palms which rose among the low houses of the village of Tamatave. These, together with the coral reefs forming the harbour, over which the great waves thundered and foamed—all formed a picture thoroughly tropical, reminding me of views of islands in the South Pacific.

The harbour of Tamatave is protected by a coral reef, which has openings to the sea both north and south, the latter being the principal entrance; it is somewhat difficult of ac