In Britain they would be in a museum protected by glass and air conditioning, accompanied by extensive explanatory notes. In Madagascar they were piled up just above the high tide mark with their contents spilling out through damaged walls.

They were coffins in the shape of canoes containing bodies between three and five hundred years old, exposed to all in a cove on the western coast of La Grande Isle.

We had waded ashore from the fishing launch owned by Monsieur Jackie, the proprietor of Les Terres Blanches hotel. This has six simple wooden huts set in untouched coastal bush overlooking the Mozambique channel. As we walked up the beach we could see the cigar shaped coffins lying in a pile in the corner of the cove. I counted eight but there were more underneath and most were in good condition. One had its planking smashed in; bones and a skull were exposed.

Jackie said that archeologists had seen the remains and believed them to be Arab traders of the 17th or 18th century but they could be much older as no tests had been done. He knew of another site further up the coast. Without permanent settlements on the land behind and with no valuables buried with the bodies there is little chance of the coffins being disturbed by humans and it seemed natural that they should lie where they had been placed so long ago.

Edition 36: Autumn 2006