The whole wealth of the island in ready money is estimated at one million dollars at most.
I do not grudge the queen the treasure she has accumulated; but it would be a fortunate thing for the population of the island if it were to be buried very soon, in company--of course--with its gracious possessor. She is certainly one of the proudest and most cruel women on the face of the earth, and her whole history is a record of bloodshed and deeds of horror. At a moderate computation, it is reckoned that from twenty to thirty thousand people perish annually in Madagascar, some through the continual executions and poisonings, others through grievous labor purposely inflicted, and from warfare. If this woman’s rule lasts much longer, the beautiful island will be quite depopulated; the population is said to have already shrunk to half the number that it comprised in King Radama’s time, and a vast number of villages have disappeared from the face of the land.
Executions and massacres are often conducted in wholesale fashion, and fall chiefly upon the Seklaves, whom the queen seems to look upon with peculiar hatred; but the Malagaseys and the other nations are not much less distasteful to her; and the only tribe that finds any favor at all in her eyes is, as I have already said, the Hovas, from whom she herself is descended.
These Hovas were once the most scorned and hated of all the races in Madagascar; they were regarded as the Pariahs are regarded in India. Under King Radama, however, and especially under the present queen, this race has distinguished itself, and attained the first place by dint of intelligence, bravery, and ambition. But, unhappily, the race has not been improved by prosperity, and the good qualities of the Hovas are more than overbalanced by their evil propensities: Mr. Laborde even declares that the Hova embodies in himself the vices of all the tribes in the island. Mendacity, cunning, and hypocrisy are not only habitual, but cherished vices with him, and he tries to initiate his offspring therein at the earliest possible age. The Hovas dwell among themselves in a continual state of suspicion, and friendship is with them an impossibility. Their cunning and slyness are said to be incredible: the most practiced diplomatists of Europe would be no match for them in these qualities.