Dodge City times. [volume] (Dodge City, Kan.) 1876-1892, 1883-08-23
A Madagascar Renaissance.

The prohibition of Christian preach
ing in 1885 was speedily followed by
the flaming out of persecution that
waNed ever tiercer and fiercer, till it
grew into seven-fold furnace of wrath.
Neither age nor sex was spared. Old
men, children, weak women, tender
girls, went fearlessly to death. Insig-
niticance could not shield the peasant
who toiled in the rice-felds, high birth
and long service could not save the
noble who stood beside the throne. Il
must obey God rather than man in this
NATTER said one gallant fellow, ''but
l will serve the Queen faithfully never
theless. The words were hardly
spoken when he was a corpse. And at
last there came day when eighteen
victims at once, among whom were sew
eral of the noblest names in Madagas-
car, were dragged before the judges
amid the yells of 4 bloodthirsty multi
tude and all condemned to die-four-
teen to be hurled from the Rock of
Nampaminarina and the remaining four
to be burned alive.
Then-the little band of heroes hay
ing refused every offer of life-came
the last scene of all, the description of
which, by native eyewitness, may
bear comparison with anything in
Foxes Book of Martyrs or the annals
of the Scottish Covenanters: "And the
eighteen appointed to die, as they sat
upon the ground surrounded by the SOL
diers, sang the hymn:
''There is blessed lard,
Making most glad:
There rest shall never end
There none be sad
And when the sentences were all
pronounced and the officer had gone
back to the place of the chief authori-
ties they took those eighteen away to
put them to death. They tied them bv
the hands and feet to long poles and
carried them on mems shoulders And
those brethren prayed and spoke to the
people as they were being carried along.
And some who looked upon them said
that their faces were like the faces of
angels. And as they took the
four that We're to be burned alive to the
place of execution, these Christians sang
the hymn, When our hearts are
then remember u.s. And when
they came to .Faravohitra there they
burned them, fixed between split spars.
And there was rainbow in the heavens |
at the time. They prayed as long as
they had any life, and they died softly
and gently. And all the people were
amazed who beheld the burning of them
there"
Equally cruel was the fate of the
heroic fourteen who were doomed to
the fatal rock. With a savage refine
ment of torture, their murderers pro-
onged the last agony by suspending
hem with cords passed round their
bodies over the brink of the fearful
)recipice, as if to make them taste the
ull bitterness of that hideous death be-
ore it came. An awful hush fell upon
he fierce multitude that crowded the
summit of the rock as the executioner's
,aunt black figure came gliding like a
pirit of evil up to the spot where the
winging forms. lowered in mid-air,
With the glorious panorama below out
pread as if in mockery before the eyes
hat were so soon to be closed forever.
)nce more, and for the last time, mercy
vas offered to each victim in turn on
ondition OF renouncing the Christian
aith. The firm refusal that answered
was barely uttered when the dooms-
nan AK flashed and fell, and in the
silence were heard the :. snig''
t the parted rope and the dull thud of
he mangled body on the cruel rocks
n below. i
No churches have been founded, no