‘Well,’ I answered, ‘I think you had better go home and reconsider your demand for four shillings a thousand; for you know very well that such wages are simply ridiculous, and when you have come to your senses, and are prepared to be reasonable, come back and we will talk the matter over.’ They went away, but returned the following week to offer to make the bricks for two shillings and sixpence a thousand. ‘No,’ I said, ‘sixpence per thousand.’ Away they went for another week, and by that time they had come down to one shilling and sixpence per thousand. ‘No,’ I replied again, ‘sixpence per thousand’; but I added: ‘How foolish all this is on your part; you keep on haggling, first saying four shillings per thousand, then two shillings and sixpence, and now one shilling and sixpence. Now, as I don’t wish to be hard on you, and I want this haggling brought to an end, and the work begun, if you come down one sixpence I will go up one.’ ‘That’s it, sir,’ they said, and so we struck a bargain for one shilling a thousand. I expected to have to pay tenpence or one shilling a thousand--although, if I could have held out, I might have got them for my first offer--but if I had offered one shilling I might have had to go up to one shilling and sixpence. As it is only during the dry season that bricks can be made and houses built, I had to raise my offer to get them to set to work. But perhaps some good sensitive soul may be thinking, ‘The interests of the Society are all very well, but what about the interests of the poor natives?’ Well, my friend, you may with confidence leave the interests of the natives in the hands of their best friends, the missionaries, as few of them are likely to take a mean advantage of their charge. But even if they were, with few exceptions, most natives I have met with may be left to look after their own interests; they are quite equal to that. But to show I was taking no mean advantage of my people I may state that, up to the time of our settlement at Fìhàonana and for long after, a porter had to carry eighty pounds of salt from Andrìba to Fìhàonana--a three days’ journey--for threepence! My brick-makers, by working morning and forenoon, could easily make two shillings a week. They could live and keep a wife and family on sixpence a week in those happy days. Rice in the husk, in the harvest season--when most people who had not large rice-fields of their own laid in a stock of rice for the year--could be bought for a penny a measure in Vònizòngo, and two measures would serve a fairly large family for a week. Since 1896 rice has never been under one shilling a measure. It has been as high even as three shillings in some parts. Starvation was formerly almost unknown in Madagascar. The men who made my bricks had very few expenses except for food; for their tailor’s, draper’s, hatter’s, shoemaker’s and upholsterer’s bills were very light!