Madagascar

Abstract

MR. SIBREE'S book is described on the title-page as a popular account of recent researches in the physical geography, geology, and exploration of the country, and its natural history and botany; and in its origin and divisions, customs and language, superstitions, folk-lore, and religious beliefs and practices of the different tribes. Together with illustrations of scripture and early church history, from native statists and missionary experience. The book commences with an interesting summary of ancient notices and accounts of the island of Madagascar, with a continuation of the history of its discovery and exploration down to the present time. The author identifies Madagascar, as has been done by some former writers, with Menuthias of Ptolemy, but there seems little doubt that Menuthias, which is described in the “Periplus Maris Erythræi,” is, as considered by Bunsen, Karl Müller, and others, the island of Zanzibar. The author admits in a note that there is some doubt about the matter. In his account of the early Arab names of the island he is not quite clear. The Arabian voyagers named the island, the home of the roc (Æpyornis), the Island of the Moon, possibly from the neighbourhood of the Mountains of the Moon. They wrote the name either Kamar or Komr, which latter name survives in the modern title of the small outlying group, the Comoro Islands, which the Arabs called Komäir or the lesser Komr. The name, as applied to the main island, survived until the arrival of the Portuguese, for on one of the oldest maps, the Charta Marina Portugalensium, of the first decade of the sixteenth century, the name Komortina occurs for the island in addition to those of Madagascar and San Lourenco.

The Great African Island. Chapters on Madagascar.

By the Rev. James Sibree Jun., of the London Missionary Society. (London: Trübner and Co., 1880.)