Cattle raising is encouraged to promote and facilitate the transport of goods. In the early twentieth century, countless dramas of colonization occurred in the island, some with bloodshed, others without excessive violence. It is one of the latter that Yvan-G. Paillard recounts under the title "The Misadventures of a Sunday Settler". "The scene takes place some 15 kilometers west of Antananarivo, at Ampangabe, in the district of Ambohidratrimo, near Ambohitrimanjaka." The main character is settler Charles-Auguste Couesnon. He arrived from France at age 29, in 1898. "He is an educated man, a bachelor of sciences. Son of a farmer, he himself has some experience with the land." Rather than remain in administration where he spent a short time, he decides to make his fortune in farming and livestock, settling on the south bank of the Sisaony, where the river definitively merges with the Ikopa. The region is partly flooded and marshy, but can be developed into pastures and rice paddies, protected by dikes. Couesnon is not the only settler in the region; several Europeans are already there, including Jules Louveau, an Antananarivo lawyer who came to develop several hundred hectares. Couesnon obtains definitively in March and July 1906, under the heading "La Brie", 30ha63a in four plots, of which he pays only 11ha77a of the provisional title, "the rest being granted to natives". "Charles-Auguste Couesnon certainly works very hard at the beginning." He soon takes a wife, a young Malagasy woman who gives him two children. He first lodges rudimentarily in the village of Ampangabe. "He is seen driving the plow himself, avoiding hiring too abundant labor, ultimately costly and often reluctant." He experiments with new farming methods. Various editions of the Guide-Annuaire present, in 1901, Couesnon and Louveau launching into potato cultivation, buckwheat (?), and especially artificial pastures for intensive livestock raising. But according to Yvan Paillard, "the illusions of the early occupation soon vanish". First, the first potato harvest is destroyed by an invasion of caterpillars. Then, all enterprises aimed at the market suffer greatly from the serious commercial depression of the early twentieth century. And it appears finally "that Malagasy land is ungrateful for the European", particularly on the Highlands. But Couesnon persists and multiplies experiments. In 1903-1904, he distinguishes himself among the livestock breeders of the province. Having some local mares, he attempts to cross them with stallions imported and supplied by the Colony. "The latter indeed encourages this breeding which would perfectly solve the priority problem of transport." He also raises mules, sheep, and obviously cattle, work oxen and dairy cows. He even tries to make cheese, "Brie style naturally". Facing his difficulties and determination, the administration shows goodwill and proposes him for various decorations. Gallieni follows his efforts closely and Couesnon knows how to show "how difficult and painful the situation of an independent settler is". Augagneur would say "it is shameful...", observing the settler's difficulties. In 1906, the latter can use penal labor (twenty common law prisoners) and in 1907, at harvest time, forty prisoners and fifty men from Manjakandriana. It thus appears that the authorities help him find workers. "The fact proves in any case that Couesnon has some difficulty recruiting labor in Ambodirano and Marovatana which are not desert regions." Irritated by this situation and encouraged by the "goodwill of the administration", rather than receive from it in 1906 and 1907 "the dubious aid of common law prisoners", he would have wanted "it to oblige neighboring villagers to come work for him since, under the guise of fokonolona corvées, a large number of natives without rice paddies are made to participate in annual dike maintenance work. It would therefore be no more unjust to persuade them to go harvest rice for wages", he writes to Augagneur on April 25, 1906. In 1907, he asks him again for "twenty-five natives" who could work for him four to five days a week for a month. "Of course, these would only be individuals who have not yet paid their due taxes, sanctioned under the indigénat regime." But the suggestion "emanates like a remnant of the Fanjakana prestations system officially abolished on January 1, 1901" and Yvan Paillard concludes: "These difficulties already suggest what the real relations of the settler are with his neighbors.