Formosa by Koxinga (Koku-sen-ya), the son of a Chinese pirate by a Japanese mother. But his rule was short-lived, and the island passed in 1683 under the control of the Chinese Government, which retained it until its cession to Japan, in 1895, as one of the conditions of peace after the war between the two nations. The aborigines had already incidentally felt the force of Japanese arms in 1874, when an expedition was sent under General Saigō to chastise them for the murder of some shipwrecked fishermen.
Formosa, as sufficiently indicated above, falls naturally into two unequal parts. To the west a narrow r alluvial plain, richly cultivated by industrious Chinese living in towns and villages, slopes gently to the sea. Eastwards the country rises into mountain ranges covered with virgin forests of camphor laurel and other huge trees, beneath whose shade wild beasts and wild men fight for a subsistence. Mount Morrison, which stands almost exactly under the Tropic of Cancer, forms the culminating point of the island, and the highest peak of the whole Japanese empire, as it has an altitude of 14,350 ft., or 2,000 ft. more than Fuji. For this reason the Japanese have re-christened it Nii-taka-yama, that is, the "New Lofty Mountain." The cliffs of the east coast of Formosa are the highest and most precipitous in the world, towering in places sheer six thousand feet from the water's edge.
It is not for nothing that so many nations have striven for the overlordship of Formosa. Tea, camphor, sugar, fruits and vegetables of every kind, are produced in immense quantities, while coal and gold are known to abound, though the store of metals has as yet scarcely been touched. But there are several indispensable preliminaries to the exploitation of these riches by their present enlightened owners. The aborigines must be subjugated, and not only they, but armed bands of Chinese rendered desperate by real and fancied grievances. For several years things went wrong with the Japanese attempts to colonise their new dependency. A perpetual clamour rose from the press of every shade of opinion and from public men anent the waste,
