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 Jap- anese 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
