history or honest narrative of "Matter of Fact." When an author insists so strenuously on the credibility of his relation, his readers are apt to suspect his veracity.

M. Emile Blanchard in the Revue des Deux Mondes (1872), speaking of Robert Drury's Journal, writes :

"Robert Drury, racheté après quinze ans de servitude, retourna en Angleterre. Le récit de ses aventures, qui a été publié, produisit une vive sensation chez nos voisins d'outre Manche. La véracité du narrateur a été affirmée; pourtant, à quelques égards, le doute est légitime. Drury prétend qu'il était esclave. Un Européen réduit en esclavage! c'est impossible, disent ceux qui connaissent les Malgaches; on tue l'Européen peut-étre, on ne le place jamais dans une condition infime". "Le prétendu esclave nous entretient en particulier de son genre de vie près du maitre."

According to a manuscript pencil note inserted after the preface of the copy of Drury's Journal now before me, "Drury was a 'Porter at the India House' (Hughes' Letters; 2nd ed., London: 1773; vol. iii. p. 88): this pretended Journal of his is clearly for most part a fiction, probably by Defoe."

Mr. Knowles has pointed out, in Notes and Queries, and the writer has lately drawn attention to, the source whence Swift drew his nautical information in his description of the storm in the voyage to Brobdingnag; in like manner I think that M. Blanchard has indicated the source of the descriptions of the Malagasy as depicted by the author of Robert Drury's Journal. He says:

"Les procédés de la guerre chez les Malgaches, dont Flacourt nous a instruits, sont décrits dans tous les détails par Robert Drury."

"Dans la contrée ou demeura Drury, les coutumes, le genre de vie, les superstitions, ressemblent à ce que l'on a vu dans le pays autrefois habité par les Français. La confiance dans les olis est pareille, les ombiasses' entretiennent les mêmes idées; le jeune captif anglais a rencontré un de ces hommes qui venait de la province d'Anossi."

"We know," says Mr. Lee, speaking of Defoe, "by the catalogue of his own library, that it was well stored with 'Voyages and Travels.' His actual experience of the sea was small; and it must have been from books and men that he gathered the professionalities so skilfully converted by his genius into a series of imaginary voyages." Now the author of Drury's Journal undoubtedly had access to a standard French work, and I am curious to know whether such a book existed in Defoe's library, of which I have not seen the cata

logue. It is Histoire de la Grande Isle de Madagascar, composée par le Sieur de Flacourt, and dated 1661.

How do I know, at first glance, that 'Drury' had access to this work? For the simple reason that he has adopted Flacourt's map, merely translating a few of the references, as, for instance-In Flacourt's map, constructed in 1657, a tract of country marked "Pays riche en bestial" appears in Drury's map of 1729 as "A country inrich'd with cattle;" and so, further south, "Pays très fertile Abandonné et ruiné par les guerres" appears as "A fruitfull Country abandon'd & ruin'd by the Wars." The spot where the Degrave was cast away, and the track of the Author's 'Travells' are each carefully marked through those portions of the map unknown to the French authors.

In 1666, Charpentier published his Histoire de l'établissement de la Compagnie Francoise; and in 1668, M. Souchu de Rennefort published Relation du premier voyage de la Compagnie des Indes Orientales en l'Isle de Madagascar ou Dauphine; so there was abundance of material available.

The Rev. J. Richardson, of the London Missionary Society, places implicit faith in Drury's Vocabulary. He writes, in the firm conviction that Drury's narrative is unimpeachable, that after he had been in Bétsiléo for a year, he "began to think that the language there spoken originally, while perhaps springing from a common stock, was totally different from that spoken by the Hova." He says: "I changed my opinion, however, before I left; and the perusal of Robert Drury's book, but more especially the Vocabulary, has quite convinced me that the language has really been one all over the island.

"I do not know that I have read anything about Madagascar that has given me such pleasure, and has set me off thinking so much, as has this Vocabulary of Drury......In going through this Vocabulary I have come to the conclusion that Drury himself did not write it, in fact could not, but that it was written from dictation. Drury was only 14 years of age when he left England. From his eleventh year he had desired to go to sea, and thus being restless, it is likely he would not be well educated. Then he was 14 years in captivity and associated only with sailors for another 14 years or so before his Adventures were written. Thus we might call him an uneducated man. The Vocabulary, however, is written with care, and we can see evidence of method and rule in all the words. Let us remember too, that he was a cockney; hence that ever recurring r." (AN NUAL, 1875; p. 99.) Mr. Richardson gives Drury's Malagasy Vocabulary in full, with the modern Hova equivalents, and remarks on the differences.

To my mind, the "evidence of method and rule" in preparing all these words given in the Vocabulary is clear, but it is also conclusive that the words were transformed deliberately from a French vocabulary to adapt them to the pronunciation which a supposed 'cockney' tongue might be supposed to give. This is merely a suggestion. The preface distinctly says the work was written by the author and merely abridged and transcribed by the editor, who remains anonymous.

No ethnologist or philologist would dream of quoting Robinson Crusoe as an original authority, so I must protest against Robert Drury's Journal being accepted as an unimpeachable record of language and manners in West Madagascar, one hundred and eighty years ago. As to the veracity of the soi-disant Drury, take the following passages :

"THE only Good which I got at Bengall was, that I here learnt to swim, and I attain'd to be so great a Proficient in swimming that it was a common Practice for half a dozen of us to tye a Rupee apiece in an Handkerchief about our Middles, and swim four or five Miles up or down the River; and when we came on Shoar, the Gentees or Moors would lend us Cloaths to put on while we staid; thus we us'd to sit and regale ourselves for a few Hours with Arrack Punch and a Dinner, and then swim back again" (p. 8).

"IT vex'd me to be stopt by a River, not above an hundred Yards over. At length, I remembred when I was at Bengall, where are the largest Alligators in the World, and who have been so bold, as to take a Man out of a shallow Boat; that if we came off from the Shore in the Night, we made a small Fire at the Head, and another at the Stern of the Boat, which the Alligator would not come near" (p. 301).

Yet this was where he was accustomed, as a common practice, to swim five miles up or down and five miles back, total ten miles, to dinner! Drury may be a good authority on swimming and crocodiles, but his editor must have sought and found more credible accounts of Madagascar on the shelves of his well-stocked library.

Since writing the foregoing paragraphs I have noticed another mannerism, which seems to give additional reason for arriving at the conclusion that either the editor of Captain Singleton and the editor of Robert Drury were one and the same person, or that the editor of the latter aped the style of the former considerably:

In the description of the After-voyage of Robert Drury in 1719, it is noticeable that he is made to say that Tulea, a good harbour, is well described in the Waggoner. This, I take it, means some current book of sailing directions, and from it the technical description of various parts of the coast has evidently been taken.

Robert Drury also states, or, rather, his editor states for him: "I have read the Atlas Geographicus, and suppose it to be a Collection of all that has been wrote of this Island. And notwithstanding I find some Things there mention'd of which I give no Account, I see no Reason to depart from any Thing herein contain'd, nor to add any Thing to it; I relate only what I saw, and knew myself."

I have before me a map purporting to be Ancienne Carte Topographique de l'Isle de Madagascar. Reduite d'après le Dessin Original, de M. Robert, fait en 1727. This is in a copy of Rochon's Voyage à Madagascar,* which was not published until 1791, but it indicates the existence of a map in 1727, in which we find the names of various Dians mentioned by Drury, and to which his editor, it appears to me, can have had access. Is it not remarkable that the names of these Dians should be marked in Robert's map of 1727, and not in the maps taken from Flacourt, illustrating Robert Drury's narrative in 1729 and 1731 ?

S. P. OLIVER.

[I am indebted for the preceding paper to the kindness of my friend Dr. Rost, Ph.D., of the India Office, who, with the author's permission, sent me the MS., together with the following additional particulars in confir mation of his theory, in a note from Captain Oliver to Dr. Rost.

Writing from Gosport, under date March 9th, 1885, Captain Oliver says :"My dear Dr. Rost,

"Since writing to you in re Robert Drury,' I have found that the author of the narrative has taken the description of the rite of circumcision from Flacourt's work (1661). Flacourt also relates the stories of two wrecks on the south coast of Madagascar, in 1618, in both of which are episodes strangely resembling Drury's story, which is said to have occurred a hundred years after. A young man named Pitre is shipwrecked and falls into the hands of a chief, and another chief purchases him, he spends several years in a species of captivity with the Malagasy, is given a Malagasy wife, etc. etc.

Curiously enough, Rochon, who wrote in Mauritius, does not allude to Robert Drury's history, which, it may be supposed, would be notorious at Isle de Mascaregne, where Captain Mackett, his deliverer, traded in 1719.

"Rochon also describes a man, named 'Robert,' who was captured by the pirates and lived several years in Madagascar. Drury's narrative was published in 1729. Robert's map was published in 1727. M. de Malesherbe gave Robert's MSS. and MS. map to Abbé Rochon (date not mentioned), and the map was dedicated in 1725 to the Duc de Chaulnes.

"Mr. J. Richardson, in his notes on Drury's Vocabulary, says: 'His untrained ear would prevent him from detecting the r in andriana, and he would very likely pronounce it dean,* and down goes dea, and doubtless another an to make up drian; doubtless the word stands for andriana.' (ANT. ANN. 1875; p. 99.)

"In Flacourt (1661) the words Andrian and Dian are used throughout in their proper sense, and doubtless the author of Drury got his Dean from the French Dian, etc.

"Excuse this hurried note. I am trying to get a publisher to print an edition of Robert Drury, to which I should like to write an introduction and make annotations beneath the original text. I can show some curious parallels. My idea is that Drury had made a voyage or two to Madagascar, had been among, if not of, the pirates; and that his brains were picked by Defoe or one of his contemporaries, who based the imaginary captivity of Drury on the stories in Flacourt and other writers. The map is Flacourt's, certainly. The religious interludes and preface are uncommonly like Defoe's method of preaching moralities, etc.

"Is there any book in your Library giving 'Sailing Instructions,' or such like, to the East Indies between 1650-1720, which describes the coasts of Madagascar ?

"Believe me,

"Yours faithfully,
"S. P. OLIVER."

Dr Rost has also forwarded me, with leave to publish it, the following letter from the Registrar and Superintendent of Records at the India Office, in reply to enquiries made by Captain Oliver. The particulars here given appear to me rather to confirm than to discredit the genuineness of Drury's narrative.

I will not attempt in a mere note to discuss the theory here put forward so ingeniously by Captain Oliver. I cannot say that the points he has advanced - although well worthy of attention, and probably throwing light upon the manner in which the book was written,-have convinced me that it is not, on the whole, a genuine production and substantially accurate and reliable. The subject, however, could not be properly discussed without a careful examination of Flacourt and other early books on Madagascar, and a detailed comparison of them with Drury's work; and this I cannot attempt in the present number of the ANNUAL. But I hope that in a future number some one will go thoroughly into the subject and favour the Editors with the result of his enquiries. Meanwhile, I should rest content with the Scottish form of verdict, "Not proven."

JAMES SIBREE, JUN. (ED.)] * In the first edition of Drury's Journal this word is uniformly spelt 'Deean.'—ED. (J.S.)