‘Among these so-called criminals who perished at the stake were some, as we have seen, of the highest rank, in whose veins the blood of former kings was supposed to flow. In the same order and manner in which they had been brought to receive judgement the remaining fourteen confessors (all of whom were from the province of Vònizòngo) were taken along the public streets, through the crowds in the city, the agitated and deeply affected crowds, to the top of the rock at Ampàmarìnana, the Tarpeian rock of Antanànarìvo. There on the top of that lofty precipice, at the edge of the western crest of the hill on which the city is built, the filthy fragments of matting wrapped round their bodies were removed. Their arms still remained pinioned and their ankles bound. Thus bound they were rolled in mats, carried one by one to the edge of the precipice and rolled over the downward-curving edge, whence they fell fifty feet, striking a projecting ledge, bounding off, and then falling upon the jagged and broken fragments of granite lying at the base of the precipice, some two hundred feet below the edge from which they had been hurled[13].’ ‘One of them, before he was rolled in the matting, asked permission to stand up and view once more the striking scene before him, as from that spot the country can be seen for some sixty miles in three directions--west, north-west, and south-west. His request was granted; he rose, feasted his eyes for a few moments on the familiar scene, and then bowed his head in prayer. He was then rolled in the mat and hurled over the precipice. As his body descended to the rocks below he was heard singing[14].’ Another, Rainiàsivòla, after being rolled over the edge of the downward-curving rock, was caught by the thorns which grow out of a fissure of the rock, some twenty feet below the edge. The officers who had rolled him over were in mortal terror, for it seemed as if their commission was not to be accomplished, and they might have to answer with their own lives for its failure. Lying there among the thorns on the edge of that precipice, the man must have looked up and seen their trepidation; for he shouted up to them: ‘Don’t be needlessly alarmed; I will wriggle myself clear and roll myself over!’ By violent exertion the thorns were snapped, he was freed, and fell upon the jagged rocks below, where he lay a mangled corpse. That man had been idol-keeper and diviner to Razàka-Ratrìmo, the father of Rànavàlona II, the first Christian Queen of Madagascar; but after his conversion he made firewood of the idol, and, as we have seen, died a martyr for his faith in Jesus Christ[15].