The superintendent of the Norwegian Mission told me (and we had the missionary in whose district the thing actually took place as a fellow passenger on our last voyage home), that a Jesuit priest went through one of their districts, going from hut to hut with two small notebooks, a _red_ one and a _black_ one. Into the red notebook he wrote the names of the Roman Catholics, and into the black all the names of the Protestants, and all who would not consent to be Roman Catholics. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘the government is going to make roads all through the island, to build railways, erect government buildings, and complete the telegraph, and all the work is to be done by _fànompòana_ (_corvée_), and it will all have to be done by the Protestants, and after it is all finished they will all be shot. The Roman Catholics will have no _fànompòana_ to do, they will have a good time of it here, and then when they die they will all go straight to Paradise!’ Among an ignorant and semi-heathen people, it was not to be wondered at, if great numbers professed themselves Roman Catholics in order to escape the hated _fànompòana_ and shooting. When religious liberty became a reality, however, and the people found out the true state of matters, and saw that, _on the whole_, the _corvée_ was very fairly dealt out, irrespective of religion, they ceased to be Roman Catholics by the thousand; and their opinion of their teachers underwent a most decided change, their language about them being much more energetic than elegant. Their hatred of them now is more bitter than ever. The queen’s uncle was shot along with the late Governor of Tàmatàve. Another uncle, Her Majesty’s chief chaplain, her chamberlain, and several nobles were transported to the island of Réunion, while the rank and file suspected of sympathy or connexion with the rising, and those of the so-called rebels who had escaped, or who had thought better of their action and returned to their homes, were shot all over the country by irresponsible officers at _Postes_, who thought no more of shooting Malagasy than they did of killing vermin, until the central provinces may be said to have reeked with human blood. No doubt the rising was a most serious affair, and, in the interests of all, had to be put down; but that might have been done with less severity, and in a much more humane and merciful way. What took place at Fort Dauphin in the seventeenth century should have been a warning against undue severity.