‘Here is a fresh instance: at Tsìafàhy, the captain has had the chapel divided into two by a low partition, so that it may be used for the two services. One Sunday lately, when the missionary, Mr. E., arrived for service, the priest was performing mass. He and his congregation waited patiently. When the Catholics had gone out Mr. E. began divine worship, but the Catholic teacher started playing the harmonium and making the children sing so noisily that it was almost impossible to hold a service. The captain declares to all that he considers Mr. E. as his greatest enemy, and that those who go and speak to that missionary will be looked upon as his personal enemies. This sudden exasperation is due, I think, to the fact that the London Missionary Society committee has written to the staff-office to have the house at Tsìafàhy given back to the missionary who wishes to return there, and the staff-office has granted it. The captain is perhaps also vexed to see that notwithstanding all his efforts the number of Catholics in his village remains very small. In the surrounding villages the situation is also critical. A lieutenant was angry lately with an evangelist. The latter had received a note from Mr. E., explaining that he sent him in his name to carry on the religious and scholastic work of that place. He had shown this to the native governor before showing it to the lieutenant, who drove him away, saying: “There are no Protestants here; you have nothing to do in these parts.”’ ‘Antanànarìvo, Friday, January 1, 1897. A new year is beginning. What will it be for Madagascar? Shall we advance further into the dark night? Or shall we walk towards the dawn? We can repeat with the Mussulmans: “God alone knows!” I have just spoken of the dark night. We are in fact in it, at least from a religious point of view. Sometimes while listening to the complaints which reach me day by day from the four quarters of the country, I fancy myself carried back two centuries, into the later years of the great king. Those bands of men with no faith of their own, who go about in the pay of the Jesuits, spreading terror among the people by their lies and violence, threatening with death those who pray with the “English,” and even in some places ill-treating the Protestant pupils, and beating their masters as they come out of school; those evangelists and native pastors accused of treason and cast into prison after the most cursory trial; those schools closed under pretext that the Catholic school is the only authorized one; those chapels used as barracks; and those others confiscated by the local authorities and given over to the priests; that quasi-royalty exercised by the Jesuits in the country, and thanks to which no governor, interpreter, or native magistrate is appointed without their advice and approval; those officers of every grade (if not all, at least a great number) lending the aid of their sword to that cassocked race to hasten the conversion of the heretics;