Royal Palace 4790 Fáravóhitra 4540 Análakély 4280 Imáhamásina 4200 Plain of Imerina 4000 Looking back upon this first experience of the country and people of Madagascar, I was profoundly impressed with the emptiness of the land. And the more I have thought the matter over, and the more I have seen of the island, the more thoroughly has that first impression been confirmed. There were people, indeed, in the capital and around it; there was nothing to gainsay here, or since we had passed into Imerina. But Ankay, how thinly peopled! While from Moramanga eastward, there are almost no villages at all, except the stopping-stations, till within twenty miles of the sea. The Betsimisāraka province between the hills and the sea we saw to be very narrow in itself, and the large villages to be very few. The story of Radáma’s conquest implies the same thing; the Hova contests have been few and easy; and no places were the scene of conflict but those whose names are well known in our own day. All travellers north and south of Tamatave and Andevoránto say the same. Along the east coast as far south as Mánanzára, there are now fourteen towns, each containing one hundred houses or more. The total number of houses in these towns amount to 2,400; which should contain a population of 12,000 people. The little villages dot the country; but they do not go far inland, and their inhabitants are few. This is but natural in a country where a cluster of a hundred houses is called a town. After careful consideration I doubt whether the entire population of the east coast from Diego Bay to Cape St. Mary’s, exceeds 150,000 people. And the majority of these are scattered in handfuls over the country, so that we can scarcely get at them. Our native friends in Tamatave, when pleading with us for an English missionary, showed us by facts and figures, that in the twenty congregations on the coast connecting themselves with the Christians of Imerina, there were altogether only two thousand people, and of these there are eight hundred in Tamatave.