CHAP. V. PRECAUTIONS AGAINST CHOLERA. 133 by ties stronger than those of mere acquaintanceship. No symptom of indisposition was observable when I left; and now I learned that within a fortnight after my departure, father, mother, and two dear children, were numbered with the dead. Mr. Banks, the pious and devoted military chap lain, with many others whom I knew, had been swept away by the fearful visitation, and mourning and desolation seemed to fill the land. The next morning officers from the governor came to say, that accounts of the fearful ravages of the cholera at Mau ritius, at the time when I left, had been sent from Tamatave to the capital. That, on that account, I could not go up to Antananarivo; and that nothing which had come from Mau ritius was to be taken to the capital. So great was the alarm created by the representations given of the virulent and fatal nature of this disease, that the system of relays of messengers organised by the government was employed, and the message from the capital was delivered in five days after wards in Tamatave, though the distance by the ordinary route is three hundred miles. Indeed, so determined was the go vernment to prevent, if possible, the introduction of this dreaded scourge, that a proclamation was issued the following day ordering that all articles of trade which had been landed from the ships should be exposed to the sun and wind for the space of forty days; that all the dollars received in pay ment for the cargoes of bullocks which had been sold should be buried in the sand forty days, in order to secure the removal of any contagion which might attach to them; and that all vessels arriving at any port of Madagascar, from whatever part of the world they might come, should be put into quarantine for the same period. A vessel soon after wards came in from the Sechelles, but was obliged to leave without supplies before the time of quarantine had expired; K 3