THE FRENCH CONQUEST OF MADAGASCAR. 748 reconnaissance of the scene of the projected military operations. The route had already beencarefully examined in the late summerby a French engineer officer, who succeeded in persuading tlae Hova authorities that he was a peaceful speculator prospecting for gold-reefs, and ready to pay handsomely for mining concessions.

shot blew up the largest magazine in the Hova entrenchments.

Majunga wasoccupied on January 16th, 1895, theHova forthaving been bombardedtwo days before by a squadron under Captain (afterwards Rear-Admiral) Bienaime. In the weeks that followed at Majunga, the difficulties and misfortunes of the expedition began. They were nearly all the result of want of ordinary foresight and proper organisation. No adequate landing accommodation existed at the port,and for some time nothing was done to make good this deficiency. As the stores for the expedition began to arrive from France they werepiledin confusion on the beach,and a mistake having been made as to the level of the high tides, tons of flour and a wholecargo of salt weredestroyed in a single night. The boats for tlae navigation of the rivers weresent out on boardof a steamer which was delayed by an unfortunate collision. When at last she arrived at Majunga it was found that the boats, which were wanted at once,could not be got at till hundreds of carts that had been loaded on top of them had been disembarked— carts for which as yet there was no road in the neighbourhood available. The first attempts at road making ended in an impassable marsh on the shore of the estuary, and the work had to be begun again on a new line. When tlae mules arrived that were to draw the carts,it was found they had never been broken to draught, and in the first experiments they kicked a good many of the carts to pieces. Stores were also made useless by being wrongly marked, and, at a moment when quinine was invaluable, several cases were lying unrecognised on the Majunga beach, labelled as nails.

The distance from the coast to the capital by this route is about 280miles, but a great inducement to select it was that it was hoped that about a hundred miles of the distancecould be done by water, along the course of the Ikopa River. The navigation ends near Mevatanana, wherethe first terracesof the inlandplateaurise from the plain of the coast region. The best season for operations in Madagascar corresponds to our spring and summer, so, though the French had declared war in October, 1894, it was not till April, 1895, that their advance inland began. But meanwhile they were making preparations for the expedition,getting together the troops, building light-draught steamers for the rivers, sending out stores, forming a base at Majunga, and occupying this and other points on the coast of the island. The declaration of war wouldhave been delayed till allwasready for action, but for tlae solid gain of beingable, once war wasdeclared, to proclaim a blockade of the coast and prevent the Hovas from obtaining further supplies of arms and ammunition from abroad Tamatave, the chief town on tlae east coast, and the port at which goods for the capital were usually landed, was occupied by marines and seamen from tlae blockadingsquadronon December 12th. There wasno resistance,and the only two shots fired were shells thrown over the Hova fort nearthe harbour, to make sureit wasevacuated. One of them in bursting killed a French subject. This was the only casualty of the day. The Hovas hadretreated toentrenched positions on the first rise of the plateau just outside the town. Theyhad made up their minds that the French would make an attack from Tamatave and try to clear the direct road to the capital.

This idea the French sedulously encouraged, with the result that for nine long months the Hovas kept some of their best troops and their heavy artillery idly waiting on the hills above Tamatave. The French warships occasionally threw a few shells among them at a range of about four miles, without doing much damage; but on June 26th, 1895, a heavy siege battery established at the fort of Tamatave,by a lucky Meanwhile, the personnel of tlae expedition was assembling, while the preparations for the advance were still in a state of backwardness and confusion. Carrier corps of coolies from Mauritius and Reunion wereenrolled to supplement the wheeled transport. Three battalions of the friendly Sakalava tribesmen, whocounted the Hovas as their hereditary enemies, were recruited and drilled under French officers,and other regiments began to arrive from France and the French colonies. The French armyis organised for campaigning in Europe, not for colonial warfare. To order a certain number of the home battalions to Madagascar, as British regiments are sentoff to this or that "little war," would be to disorganise the existing elaborate system of home defence. But fourspecial service