# Through China with a camera/Chapter 6

CHAPTER VI.
CANTON (Continued). MACAO. SWATOW. CHAO-CHOW-FU. AMOY.
The Charitable Institutions of China—Macao—Description of the Town—Its inhabitants—Swatow—Foreign Settlement—Chao-chow-fu—Swatow fan-painters—Modellers—Chinese Art—Village Warfare—Amoy—The Native Quarter—Abodes of the Poor—Infanticide—Manure-pits—Human Remains in Jars—Lekin—Romantic Scenery—Ku-lang-su—The Foreign Settlement.
The charitable institutions of China are far from numerous, and but ill-organised as a rule. At the time of my visit an establishment under Chinese supervision, and supported entirely out of Chinese funds, was about to be opened in Canton for relieving the sick and destitute, and supplying coffins to the poor. The intention of its founders, so it is supposed, was to counteract the influence of the hospitals and charities supported by the foreign Christian Missions in their city.
But when I left Canton the place was still unopened, although a house had already been bought, which had been occupied as a private residence by Pun-ting-qua, the last of the Hong merchants, whose property, as I have said already, had been confiscated by Government. This house was one of the finest I ​ have seen in China, and its magnificent costly decorations con- veyed some notion of Pun-ting-qua's great wealth, which had been quietly absorbed by the authorities.
Among the charities in Canton there is a Leper Village. These sort of asylums for plague-stricken men and women are found in various quarters of the Empire, but as I only visited one place of the kind, I shall reserve what I have to say about them for a future page. There are also institutions for the aged and infirm, and a foundling hospital, in which the poor children, who may be left at its door, are nursed on the slen- derest fare. Dr. Kerr gave some interesting details as to the management of this hospital, in the "China Review." One wet nurse, so he tells us, has at times as many as three infants to feed, and she must herself be reduced to starvation allowance, as her pay is only about eight shillings a month. Many of the nurslings die, as might be expected, while those who survive are sold for about three shillings apiece. It is mostly female children who are brought to this benevolent institution, for girls are esteemed nothing but encumbrances to poor parents in China, the reproach of their mothers, who ought to give birth to boys alone. These foundlings are bought by the wealthy and brought up as servants or concubines ; or else they are disposed of to designing hags, who purchase them on speculation and reserve them for a more miserable fate. This custom of investing in girls as speculative property, and of rearing them carefully till their personal attractions will command a high market value, is one of the worst aspects of that traffic in slaves which is carried on without shame or concealment all over Chinese soil. The evil might be mitigated if we could but persuade the Chinese Government to encourage female
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Macao is interesting as the only Portuguese settlement to be found on the coast of China. It may be reached by steamer either from Hongkong or Canton, and it is a favourite summer resort for the residents of our own little colony. In that pretty watering-place we may enjoy the cool sea-breezes, and almost fancy, when promenading the broad Praya Grande, as it sweeps round a bay truly picturesque, that we have been suddenly transported to some ancient continental town. Macao is a magnificent curiosity in its way. The Chinese say it has no right to be there at all; that it is built on Chinese soil; whereas the Portuguese, on their part, allege that the site was ceded to the King of Portugal in return for services rendered to the Government of China. These services, however, cannot have been properly appreciated, for the Chinese in 1573, built a barrier-wall across the isthmus on which the town stands, to shut out the foreigners. The place has had a chequered history since the time of its original foundation, sometimes being under its own legitimate Government, and at others being claimed and ruled by the Chinese. But its history, however important to the parent country, had better be left alone, more especially as there are passages in it which reflect no great lustre on the ​ nation whom Camoens adorned. The main streets in Macao are deserted. The houses there are painted in a variety of strange colours, some of the windows being fringed with a rim of red, which gives them the look of inflamed eyes in the painted cheeks of the dwellings. But there are magnificent staircases, wide doorways and vast halls, though the inmates for the most part are a very diminutive race; they are called Portuguese, but they suffer by comparison with the more recent arrivals from the parent land, being darker than the Portuguese of Europe, and darker even than the native Chinese. There is trade going on the streets, but it is of a very languid kind, and the gambling-houses, or the cathedral are the chief places of resort.
The forts are, of course, garrisoned with troops from Europe. At 4 p.m. or thereabouts, the settlement wakes up ; carriages whirl along the road; sedan chairs struggle shorewards, that their occupants may taste the sea-breeze ; and the mid-day solitudes of the Praya Grande have been converted into a fashionable promenade. Ladies are there too, attired in the lightest costumes and the gayest colours; some of them pretty, but the majority sallow-faced and uninteresting, and decked out with ribbons and dresses, whose gaudy tints are so inhar- moniously contrasted, that one wonders how Chinnery the painter could have spent so many of his days among a com- munity so wanting in artistic tastes. The young men — for there seem to be no old men here, at least all dress alike, quite irrespective of years — are a slender race, but not more slender than diminutive. But if Macao is interesting as a Portuguese settlement, and the only one which now remains to Portugal of those which her early traders founded in China, it can also boast of historic associations, giving it a special and independent ​
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attraction. Here the poet Camoens found a retreat, and here too, Chinnery produced a multitude of sketches and paintings, which have really had some influence on art in the south of China.
Swatow is the next place on our route northward, and to reach it we take steamer from Hongkong. There is, I must tell you, almost daily a service of steamers up and down the Chinese coast. The splendid passenger accommodation and the facilities for conveying merchandise, suppUed by these vessels, are of a kind not easily surpassed; and considering the nature of the coasts they navigate and the dangerous typhoons to which they are exposed, very few accidents occur.
Swatow is the port of the city Chao-chow-fu, which lies in the province of Kwang-tung. Chao-chow-fu ought really to have been an entrepot for foreign trade, but this idea was given up in consequence of the turbulence of the surrounding clans. The town is built upon the banks of the Han, and the district through which that river flows is one of the most fertile in the province. Swatow has a harbour available even for vessels of the largest tonnage; and so far as that point goes the place is better suited to foreign trade than Chao-chow-fu would have been ; for the latter place stands some thirty miles up the river, and can only be reached by lighters of a shallow draught. The foreign settlement, or rather the residences of foreigners, are perched upon a low range of hills, which remind one of the barren cinder-looking hills of Aden. Huge boulders of granite are planted up and down these hilly slopes in the most extra- ordinary positions ; some are like Druidical circles, others re- semble great obelisks. Not unfrequently, too, they bear in- scriptions in Chinese characters, which are nothing more than the productions of natives, who have sought to gain an unprofitable ​immortality by graving their names, or their poetical effusions, or else a record of some local incident upon the imperishable surface of these stones. Here the foreign houses and many of the native ones too, are built with a local concrete, made of the felspar clay which abounds in the neighbourhood, combined with shell-lime. In process of time this compound hardens into a stony substance, producing solid and durable walls. The interiors of these dwellings are no less remarkable, for the ceilings are adorned with beautiful stucco cornices, re- presenting birds and flowers in endless variety and profusion. The men who execute this sort of artistic work are to all appearance coolies, receiving for their labour but little more than they could earn by tilling the soil or drawing water ; and yet, to fit themselves for their tasks, they must undergo what is a fine art training, at least to a Chinaman. When at work they squat on the floor, wifli a hod full of stucco before them, and a sort of small baking-board at their feet. On this board, with their fingers and a trowel, they model flower after flower — stems, foliage, fruit and all — besides birds of one or two kinds ; passing the portions, as they complete them, up to a workman, whose business it is to group the bits together, and fix them in position. No moulds are used, no wooden pattern of any sort, — all is done with the unaided hand and eye.
Of the native settlement of Swatow I need only say that it is more or less like the river quarters of Canton, or Fatshan, or any other town in the south of China; but I cannot refrain from introducing the reader to the Swatow fan-painters. There are a number of fan-shops in the main street, and one which is perhaps more celebrated for the beauty of its work than any of the others can pretend to be. To this shop, then, I
Bridge at Chao-chow-fu.
​hospitality proved him to be no exception to the majority of his associates in China. We were here shown some of the most beautiful and delicate fan-painting that I have ever come across, representing, for the most part, garden scenes. Asking to be introduced to the artists, I was shown into an apartment at the back of the premises, where I found three occupants. Two were seated before a table, engaged in designing on the yet unpainted fans, while the third lay stretched on a couch, indulging in an opium-pipe. They were, all of them, opium- smokers; and it struck me that their most finely imaginative paintings were executed under the influence of the drug. As I have said, the pictures produced by these men were remark- able for their beauty, and that because the drawing and per- spective were good, and the designs full of delicacy. Here, then, we find Chinese art pure and simple, without the ad- mixture of any foreign element, as in Hongkong ; and my opinion is that it is a higher class of art than we are apt to suppose the Chinese to possess. But then we must bear in mind that after all we do not know much about China and her art. It was only the other day, when in Peking, that I picked up one or two old pictures which had formed part of the collection of a private Chinese gentleman, and that alone gave me a more favourable opinion of, at any rate, the ancient school of Chinese artists.
One specimen, a series of original sketches representing chil- dren at play, was as remarkable for its quaint humour as for its clever execution; yet the pictures are nothing more preten- tious than unelaborated pen-and-ink sketches. In a postscript attached to his book, the artist modestly tells his readers, "I have made up a portfolio of twelve sketches, consecutively illustrative of the four seasons of the year, beginning with a ​representation of New Year festivities, and ending with the drawing of the snow lion; and, though I cannot pretend to the perfection of the artists of bygone days, perhaps I may aspire to six or seven tenths of their talent. Written on the 4th day of the 4th month of the year Woo-shin, by Se Hea of Hangchow." There can be no doubt that art has declined in China, and this the Chinese themselves confess, as the above note will serve to show. Moreover, as with ourselves, the wealthy and cultivated classes in China expend large sums of money in collecting the works of the ancient masters, which they carefully preserve. Many of these old paintings have been executed on silk scrolls, and thus a Chinese picture gallery is quite unlike what we should expect to see, for the pictures are not framed and exposed on the walls, but are kept carefully rolled up and protected against the light and air. My friend Mr. Wylie, who is well known to Eastern scholars, when examining several old pictures which I had brought from Peking, made some interesting remarks on this point. He said, "Many anecdotes are on hand regarding the achievements of the old masters. Thus, in the third century we are told of a painter, Tsaou Puh-ying, who, when he had finished a screen for the Emperor, added some flies to the picture by a few touches of the pencil here and there; great was his gratification at seeing his Majesty take up a handkerchief to drive these flies away. Not less celebrated was Hwan Tseuen, who flourished about A.D. 1000, and who introduced several pheasants into a mural decoration in one of the halls of the palace. Some foreign envoys, who had brought a tribute of falcons, were ushered into this hall; and no sooner did the birds of prey get sight of the pheasants on the wall than they made a precipitate dart at their victims, more of course to the detriment of their heads than to the satisfaction of their appetites." ​Between Swatow and Chao-chow-fu I have met wayfarers on a hot day stripped to the skin, every article of their clothing bound around the head, and thus marching along, to all appear- ance without the slightest sense of impropriety. The higher one ascends the Han the more savage-looking are the people we encounter there, but, happily, the clan-fights had been sup- pressed and peace re-established in the province. At Chao- chow-fu I got up one morning before daybreak, to photograph an old bridge across the river there, and I fondly thought that being so early astir, I should get clear of the city mob ; but as it happened, there was a market held on the top of the bridge, and even before it was quite light, long trains of produce-laden coolies were pouring in from every side. I had just time to show myself and take a photograph, when a howling multitude came rushing down to where I stood near my boat on the shore. Amid a shower of missiles I unscrewed my camera, with the still undeveloped photograph inside, took the apparatus under my arm, and presenting my iron-pointed tripod to the rapidly approaching foe, backed into the river and scrambled on board the boat. Chao-chow-fu bridge is not unlike the one at Foo- chow, which spans the river Min, It is built of stone and contains a great many arches, or rather square spaces for the passage of boats beneath. On each side of the causeway above, a row of houses has been erected, and these project beyond the parapets and overhang the stream for as much as three- fourths of their entire depth. There seems, indeed, to be no part of each house, except the brick wall in front, which rests upon the bridge; while as to the fabric itself, it is held up by a series of long poles, which abut upon the projections of the buttresses below, and thus serve to support the dwelling like the under-props of a bracket. This was what one would call ​a break-neck sort of architecture, and yet the great market of the town is held on this bridge, and there we find the dwell- ing-houses and shops of the merchants. There they trade and there they sleep, calmly awaiting the hour which shall drop them and their frail tenements into a muddy grave. But they had other means still to ensure safety both for property and life. Suspended between each archway hang two slender wooden frames, and these barriers the householders piously let down at night to deter malignant spirits from passing beneath their dwellings — a device, I need hardly say, universally successful. Chao-chow-fu is open to foreign trade, and on one or two occasions the attempt has been made to establish a British Consulate in the town ; but it has always been a failure. Tur- bulent mobs continually stone foreigners, and during the time of my visit the Vice-consul was the only European in the place. He, when I told him how I had been attacked by the rabble, said quietly, " You are no worse off than your neighbours ; it is just what every white man must expect at the hands of the lawless ruffians of the town." So I was not sorry when I turned my back upon this part of Kwang-tung, and descended once more to Swatow. Every year sees an increase in the number of emigrants who leave this part of China to work on the plantations in Siam, Cochin China, or the Straits, and we may be sure that the price of labour in China is at a very low ebb, when we find that wages, running from two to four dollars a month, are all the inducement held out to allure the coolies from their homes ; and that such a sum as this even is, by the toiling poor, esteemed sufficient to enable them to save money to invest in a farm on their return to their native land. It was up into this region that Juilin sent a military mandarin with a force of 2,000 men. This officer, at the time of my ​visit, was known in the district as Chao-Yang. His task was approaching completion and there was consequently more of peace and prosperity in the country than had been its lot for many previous years. Fang-Yao, for that was the mandarin's inharmonious designation, pursued a rough and ready sort of system in the conduct of his operations for putting matters to rights. Thus, at the village of Go-swa, near Double Island, he seized a man named Kwin-Kwong, well known to foreigners, and required him to surrender 200 of the chief rebels of his village. Kwin-Kwong produced 100, many of them, poor wretches, in- nocent substitutes for the true offenders. Under pressure and threats a few more victims were ultimately given up, and the whole were then beheaded, Kwin-Kwong's own skull being tossed into the pile to swell the number of the sufferers. It must have been bloody work ; more than i ,000 are said to have been de- capitated during Fang-Yao's memorable march.
Swaboi, one of the most powerful villages in the province, stands about two miles distant from Swatow, and for many years has monopolised the right to supply coolies to that town.
Several years ago, seventeen other villages combined against Swaboi, and resolved by force, if necessary, to put a stop to its monopoly of labour. The war lasted four years, and termin- ated in favour of Swaboi. At such times the villagers practise the most heartless cruelties on each other, burying their enemies, for example, while still alive, and head downwards, in graves prepared with quicklime and earth. It was, indeed, in this district that I gathered a notion of the inhuman treatment of idiots practised in some parts of China. I myself have seen an idiot exposed outside a village in a wooden cage, and there left for the passers-by to feed him, or better still to starve and die. ​I afterwards went a second time to see this being that looked more brute than man, but he had died in his cage.
Amoy is the next open port in our northern route; and though situated in the province of Fukien, its geological features resemble those of Swatow. Thus the same decomposing hills crowned with huge granite bare boulders, are to be seen at the entrance of the harbour ; and one of these boulders which faces the port, has some passages connected with the local history of the place engraven in huge characters upon its stony sides. Several of them rear their grey heads to a great height out of the water, or above the shore close by, and these the natives look up to with reverence and awe, as objects intimately con- nected with the Feng-shui, or good luck of the port. But in such a place as this it is but seldom that good luck waits upon the lower and most superstitious classes. The Amoy men make good soldiers, so at least it is said ; they certainly fought well for their independence, and were the last to yield to the Tartar invaders, and those upon whom the conquerors seemed to have pressed most heavily. To this day they wear the turban which they assumed to hide the tonsure and queue imposed on them by the conquerors. The dialect here is so different from that spoken in Canton as to lead my boys to imagine that they were once more out of China and in some foreign realm. But a glimpse of the town quickly reassured them. There they fell in with men from their own province, and with odours and ap- pearances so unmistakably Chinese that there was no getting over the fact; and they soon acknowledged that this indeed could still be no other than their own Chinese land. At Amoy, as in Swatow and most other Chinese seaport towns, the houses in the native quarter are huddled together like a crowd of sight-
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dilapidation ; and the long, dark, narrow street which runs the length of the settlement is paved with cross flags of stone so worn and loose that they rest for the most part in treacherous pits of mud; and thus, if a foot be placed hastily on the rocking flag, a shower of most offensive dirt is splashed up over one's clothes. Every second shop reeks with a smell of roasting fat and onions. Mangy dogs and lean pigs yelp and grunt as we disturb their occupations : these are the sanitary authorities of the locality and to them the duty falls to clear up the refuse and garbage. Nor were these the only inconveniences ; on nearly every occasion when I waded my way along the unin- viting thoroughfares, I found it blocked at some point by a strolling band of players, hired to perform in public by one of the more liberal-spirited tradesmen. The approach to the foreign merchants' establishments can hardly be accounted better than the miserable Chinese alley which I have just described ; but the offices themselves, when the difficulty of reaching them is over- come, are found to be venerable structures, filled with all sorts of produce beneath, and showing all the evidences of business above.
The trade of this port has grown, and is likely to continue growing, just in proportion as the rich island of Formosa opposite is developed, and its tea, sugar and other products increase. The late transfer of Formosa to the Japanese will alter the conditions of trade, although the Japanese may find it profitable to ship produce to the nearest markets on the Chinese mainland. The import trade and the distribution of foreign goods inland, is pretty effectually choked off by the illegal system of transit duties levied at the various stations, and regulated chiefly by the need or avarice of the local officials at the various points ​ along the route. There is also a grievous charge called Lekin, originally imposed as a war tax on foreign goods, and never since withdrawn. The American Consul, in writing on the subject, said: "At Swatow the local taxes levied on imports remain unchanged; that is to say, about one-fortieth of what they are in Amoy;" and he goes on to observe "that natives can still bring foreign goods overland from Swatow to the Amoy districts, and sell them at a cheaper rate than if they were imported and sold direct in Amoy." ' This Lekin tax was in- stituted to defray the expenses either of the Taiping rebellion or of the "small knife" rebellion, or both. The "small knife" rebellion of 1853 was a serious affair for Amoy. The rebel chief, or ringleader, of this dagger society was said to be a Singapore Chinaman of the name of Tan-keng-chin. The out- break was, in fact, a development of one of the secret so- cieties that have been a source of continual trouble to all the countries into which Chinese labour has flowed.
In 1864, a few months after Nankin fell into the hands of the Imperialists, and when the cause of Tien- Wang or Heavenly King was all but crushed, the last remnant of his followers made a final effort and captured Chang-chow-fu, a city which stands in the same relationship to Amoy as Chao-chow-fu to Swatow. The place was eventually retaken by the ImperiaHsts after a protracted struggle; and this barbarous war was then closed, amid scenes of cold-blooded massacre as inhuman as any that have stained the annals of the Taiping revolt, whose overthrow was brought about by foreign intervention, and by one or two powerful decisive blows dealt at the strongholds of the rebel towns. Alas ! these successes were but too frequently followed
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​up by indiscriminate slaughter, for those are the means by
which a weak government seeks to strike terror into the hearts of the people.
Occurrences such as that which I am now about to describe were accordingly by no means rare. The fight was ended and the fruits of the victory were reckoned up. It was reported to the conqueror that there were 254 heads and 231 queues and ears of people supposed to be rebels ; at any rate, they were heads and ears and queues, and these the Imperialist troops had to lay at the feet of the authorities. It is astonishing how some of these mutilated wretches survived. Thus I myself saw a man who reported that his head had been nearly severed from his body, but who succeeded in reaching Amoy. There were certainly marks of a severe wound on the neck, similar to those described by Mr. Hughes in the "China Review" for June 1875. I have also seen a man enjoying good health who had both ears chopped off and part of the scalp carried away. Mr. Hughes again tells us, in another paper, that female infant- icide is perhaps worse in this part of the Fukien province than in any other quarter of the Empire, and this corroborates the conclusion I myself had come to from enquiries 1 made on the spot. Mr. Hughes one day met a stout well-to-do-looking man of the coohe class, carrying two neat and clean round baskets, slung on a pole which he bore across his shoulder. *' Hearing the cry of a child, I stopped him, when I found that he had two infants in each basket;" and it is recorded that this crafty old speculator in innocents was on his way to sell his living burden at the Foundling Hospital, where he would receive 100 cash, or about fivepence, for a female child, and as much as three pounds for a boy.
This Foundling Hospital was organised by a native merchant ​whom I had the pleasure of meeting, and it is a lamentable fact that the prospect of receiving fivepence will tempt a mother to part with her babe.
The Amoy Hospital is, however, conducted on rather more liberal principles than that in Canton ; for if any one wishes to obtain a child, he may get one here free of charge, provided that he can deposit suitable credentials as to his own respect- ability. One of the resident Christian missionaries informed me that he felt convinced that 25 per cent of the female chil- dren of Amoy were destroyed at birth. The natives themselves make no secret of this crime, and I saw one old woman who confessed to having made away with three of her daughters in succession. They excuse their misdeeds on the ground of ex- treme poverty, and they certainly are poor and wretched to a degree I had no conception of before I visited their abodes. The district around is naturally barren and unproductive, and plundering raids of rebel and Imperial troops crippled the ener- gies of the needy inhabitants. War, it is true, has thinned the population, but not to such an extent as materially to affect its density.
An able-bodied man can here earn only fivepence a day, and skilled workmen, of whom there are many, are paid about eight- pence per diem. There is a great trade carried on in one quarter of the town, or rather in a suburb, in the collection and preparation of manure, which is afterwards sold to the farmers to fertilise their poor lands. The people who deal in this commodity dwell on the edge of the foul pits into which filth of all sorts is thrown, and for the use of the hovels in which they reside many of them pay about fivepence a month in rent. Close to this spot is a hill on which the poor are buried. There is no lack of recent graves, but all such are ​covered with lime, mixed with fragments of glass and pottery, in order to keep pigs and dogs from digging up the bodies. How the people subsist here it is hard to say! Judging from the multitude of graves they must die in great numbers, and who can wonder at it, in an atmosphere that smells so putrid. I looked into one or two of the dwellings; they were single- roomed huts reared above the naked sod. Often they contained no furniture at all, and their ragged lean occupants were filthy in the extreme; and yet numerous children were to be seen running about, pitching pebbles into the pools, or chasing the pigs and pariah dogs to prevent them from eating up the only article of trade in the locality.
There was another hill not far off, and commanding a view of the harbour. On this I found a row of glazed earthen pots, each containing a skeleton; one had been broken and the bones lay scattered over the face of the rock, while a number of children were playing catch-ball with the skull. What mean these dis- honoured reUcs, over which some Ezekiel might prophesy, lament- ing the degradation of his people.?* These are the remains deposited here to await interment— a ceremony which can only be properly accomplished by attending to the times and places which the professors of Feng-shui may prescribe. But alas 1 too many of these unsepulchred skeletons will never know any resting-place more hallowed than the pots in which they were originally stored. There they crumble, unfriended and forgotten, for their surviving kinsmen are perhaps themselves cut off from the land, or else too poor to pay the expenses of the for ever deferred burial rites. Now, then, my readers can appreciate the true motives of a Chinaman, who, as I have already said, will devote his earnings to the purchase of a coffin, funeral raiment and a burial site in anticipation, many years before his death. ​My sketch of Amoy has thus far been a dark one, and yet the true picture is not without some glances of Hght striking down even into the lowest quarters of the town. Thus, in one of my many perambulations I came to a very narrow and very dark lane, where I found the humble tenants of the houses engaged in what, to me, was quite a new industry. Men, women and children were all busily occupied in the manufacture of most beautiful artificial flowers, from a pith obtained in Formosa, from the same plant {Aralia papyrifera) as that out of which the so-called rice-paper is made. I entered shop after shop, and everywhere found thousands of flowers spread out on trays, and each one so lifelike that it might almost be mistaken for nature herself. But tiny hands were at work here too, and roses, lilies, azaleas and camelias grew up with wonderful celer- ity beneath them. The workshops are the dwellings, the offices and the warehouses of each firm, or family; and the workers within are so closely packed that strangers not unfrequently must watch the process, or make a purchase, by taking up a position outside. I bought a great many of these flowers from a man in a very mean shop indeed. He was extremely poor, and he asked me for an advance of money, ofl'ering to furnish security if I wished. I lent him a few dollars without troubling him for securities; and though I knew nothing about him, he carried out the transaction with the most scrupulous honesty.
There are many wealthy Chinese merchants in Amoy, who live in good style and in superior houses on the hills above and beyond the town. On those hills, too, we may find temples and monastic establishments, built in the most romantic situations among great granite boulders which tower in some places many hundred feet above the plain. Thus from the rock on which the
lang-su that European settlers chiefly reside; and there the houses environed with parks and gardens, are second to none in China. Some Christian missions also are established in the same quarter, and not unfittingly, for there is a wide opening for mission labour in a field so benighted and so woe- stricken as Amoy.
From Amoy I crossed over by steamer to Formosa; but before I left the harbour I had time to pull off to the steam- ship "Yesso," and take a hurried leave of an esteemed friend broken down in health, and then homeward bound. I never saw him again, for he died before reaching home. I had a pleasant companion in Dr. Maxwell, the medical missionary of Tai-wan-fu, in Formosa, and from him I heard some interesting accounts of the savages on this strange island. Leaving the harbour at 5 p.m., we passed the Pescadore group of islands at daybreak next morning. The wind all the while blew strongly from the north, forcing me to forego my dinner, and to confine myself a prisoner in my berth until I was summoned on deck to see land. It was a grateful sight, but how the sea was rolling! and the land —alas! the only thing that struck me about it was that it must be a very long way off. Having once gained my sea legs, I had one or two hours' leisure to scrutinise the coast and the inland mountain ranges, which lost themselves in the clouds above. A narrow rocky inlet was pointed out to me as the only harbour accessible in this quarter; and it was abreast of this spot, some two miles from shore, that the steamer came to her moorings. Here I found myself keenly interested in the experiences of a Malay on board, who informed me that vessels were constantly being wrecked along this shore, and that their crews were invariably eaten to a man by the ​bloodthirsty savages, who perpetually scoured the beach in search of prey. He had probably heard of the wreck of the schooner **Macto" in 1859, and how the crew were massacred on this very beach by the natives; or else he may have been referring to the murder at a later date, of a number of American castaways by the aborigines further south. It is to punish outrages of this sort that a Japanese army was despatched to Formosa, in retaliation for some particular barbarities which chance to have been practised upon a Japanese crew ; so say the Japanese. I predicted in my previous work the probability of coming difficulties between Japan and China.
We are told by the "Pall Mall Gazette" that when the Japanese fleet anchored off Formosa, and before a single soldier landed, a Chinese corvette and a gunboat steamed into sight, with guns run out, men at quarters and everything prepared for action. Between them these two vessels as they assure us, might have sunk the whole Japanese squadron ; but after some palaver the Chinese men-of-war quietly steamed off again, and the Japanese troops were landed. It is possible that this visit of the Japanese to Formosa and their finding it a land greatly to be desired and full of undeveloped resources, had some influence in their eventually securing the island for themselves.
Before we disembark and proceed on our journey inland, it may be as well to give the reader some general notion of the island and its position. Isla Formosa, or the Beautiful Island, as the Portuguese named it, lies at the distance of about one hundred miles off the mainland. In time the Chinese crossed over and planted a settlement on the island, driving the savages high up into the almost inaccessible mountains. The island runs nearly north and south, its length is about 250 miles, and
it is about 84 miles broad across its widest part. Down its ​
$_{MountainGorge,IslandofFormosa.}$
​centre a rocky spine of lofty mountains stretches longitudinally
nearly from sea to sea, with peaks, in some places, about fourteen thousand feet high. The Chinese occupy only the western half of the island and a small portion at its northern extremity, while the whole of the mountainous region to the east is held by independent tribes of aborigines. Before it was ceded to Japan the island was ruled over by a Taotai resident at Tai-wan-fu, and appointed by the Central Government. The Taotai of Formosa was the only officer of the same rank in the Empire who enjoyed the privilege of direct appeal to the throne. The population is about three millions, viz., two and a half millions Chinese and half a million aborigines. Naturalists suppose that Formosa was originally joined to the mainland; and what confirms them in this view is the great similarity of its flora and fauna to that of the nearest provinces of China. But let us land and see for ourselves.