‘About the seventh century, the Arabs of Mecca took possession of the Comoro Islands, lying to the north-west of Madagascar, and extended their commerce all over the coasts of that great island; and it was to a marked extent their language, civilization, and religion which for centuries dominated the north-west of the island. The great Arab geographer Edresi, who lived in A.D. 1099, has left among his writings a description of Madagascar, which he calls Zaledi. The same author refers to the emigration of Chinese and Malays, who settled in Madagascar at an epoch which unfortunately cannot now be precisely determined, but which at least is not so very remote; these were probably the ancestors of the Hovas.’ Madagascar was first made known to modern Europe by the celebrated Venetian traveller Marco Polo, in the thirteenth century. He, however, had never seen or visited the island, but had heard during his travels in Asia various accounts of it under the name of Magaster, or Madagascar. He devotes a chapter of his most interesting book of travels to a description of the island; but he seems to have confounded it with Magadoxo on the adjoining coast of Africa, as much of what he relates is evidently confused with accounts of the districts on the mainland of Africa, and of the island of Zanzibar, since he says that ivory is one of its chief products, and that it contained elephants, camels, giraffes, panthers, lions, and other animals which never existed in Madagascar. The ‘rock’ or ‘rukh,’ a gigantic bird which he describes, is in all probability the aepyornis, the original of the huge bird of Sinbad the Sailor, long deemed fabulous. The aepyornis, now extinct, was a struthious bird allied to the New Zealand moa. It produced an egg which would fill a gentleman’s silk hat. It was not until the beginning of the sixteenth century that any European set foot on Madagascar. Towards the end of the fifteenth century the adventurous Portuguese navigators, Bartholomew Diaz and Vasco da Gama, reached the southernmost point of Africa, and rounded the Cape of Good Hope, thus discovering the sea route to India and the far East. On the Mozambique coast da Gama found numbers of Arabs trading with India, and well acquainted with the island of Madagascar. In A.D. 1505, King Manoel of Portugal sent out a fleet to the Indies, under the command of Don Francisco de Almeida, who in the following year sent back to Portugal eight ships laden with spices. On their way they discovered, on February 1, A.D. 1506, the east coast of Madagascar. Joas Gomez d’Abrew discovered the west coast of the island in the same year, on August 10, St. Laurence’s Day, from which circumstance it was called the Island of St. Laurence, a name which it retained for more than a hundred years.