They made Imerina and all the upper plateau their own. And here for five hundred years they settled down and spread and grew. They ate, they drank; they planted, they builded; they spun and they wove; they married and were given in marriage. They formed the iron hatchet and the iron spade. They cut down the forests and built houses, well framed, well fitted, with roofs that successfully shed the rain. They built villages and towns; surrounded them with deep ditches and protected them with the cactus hedge. They grew into compact tribes, obedient to their chief and his appointed officers. The members of the tribe met in council; and in the public assemblies, not only maintained their liberties, but developed the powers and the resources of their mellifluous language. They made war on their neighbours or defended themselves against attack: their kings cemented peace by marriage alliances. They made great feasts; and though no poetry has survived, their orators could recite the traditions of the past: and their assemblies were enlivened with the dance and the song. Great heroes arose among them, like Rapéto and Ralámbo; of whom wondrous stories went abroad. Two hundred and fifty years ago the Malagasy not only began to be better known to the outside world, but light begins to be thrown upon their internal growth and condition. At that period we find the Arab merchants settled at three points on the coast and a foreign trade steadily carried on. We find them on the east at two points. At Mátitánana they have been settled long; they have written the Malagasy language in Arabic characters; they have taught the tribes the Arabic names of the week days and the months: but they have made no converts. As the first specimens of the rukh’s egg were dug up here, it is possible that Sindbad’s application of the old story may have been derived from some sailor who had visited the settlement. There was another Arab colony on the island above Tamatave, called by them Nosi Ibrahim: now known by the French name of I. Ste Marie. Both these settlements, owing doubtless to the Portuguese invasion of the eastern seas, were in a state of decay. The third settlement, at what is now called Mojangá, had done better: it was more easily accessible; it was nearer to the head quarters of the Arab trade at Zanzibar; it was on the lee side of the island, on a splendid bay; and both the Indian cloth trade and the traffic in slaves were carried on under favourable conditions. More than this, able men among the Arabs had watched their opportunities, had practically usurped the government of the locality, and as the Sakalavás had no cohesion, they retained their power long. At this time the trade of the Indian Ocean was breaking up. The Portuguese had built up nothing in the place of the power they had destroyed. The sea swarmed with adventurers: Captain Kyd and other English pirates made Madagascar their head