English

The Fugitives; or, The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar

A group of people from a British ship have gone ashore to stretch their legs, when enemies approach, the ship's boat retreats to the ship and they are left stranded ashore. The book deals with their efforts to find what they hope will be civilisation in the capital of the Island of Madagascar, which is something like the size of France. Unfortunately the reigning Queen has a hatred of Christianity which had been brought to the Island by missionaries some forty years before. Our heroes find themselves assisted by a Christian net-work, but when they get to the capital they are appalled by the carnage and torture they find when the Queen has one of her rages against Christianity. Based on fact, the story told here of the repression of Chritianity in an emerging nation was all too true. The Queen died in 1867, and was succeeded by her son, an altogether different person, at which point our heroes take ship for England, and the story ends. The story is full of action, the only quibble being the long and rather similar names the Malagasy people who appear in the story have. This makes it sometimes rather hard to make out what is happening. Robert Michael Ballantyne (1825-1894), A Short B

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