the corruption, the misgovernment, and malpractices of every kind that were rampant. Foreigners told exactly the same tale, adding details about the shameless lives led by officials, and the insolence of the soldiery and imported coolies, who, peasants for the most part at home, there got brevet rank as representatives of the conquering race. On all sides the cry was that a false start had been made, and that an entirely new departure was needed, if this island "Beautiful," but unhappy was ever to have rest. Since then reform has been earnestly laboured for at Tōkyō, and considerable progress, both material and moral, has been made. Roads have been pushed through the forests, light houses and railways have been constructed, the Japanese school system and the conscription law have been introduced. Evidently, the official intention is that the incorporation of Formosa with the Japanese empire shall be no mere form of words, but, so far as may be, an actual assimilation of the conquered to the conquerors.
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It would not be possible at the present day, in however brief a sketch of Formosa, to omit all reference to the Rev. Dr. Mackay, recently deceased, the pioneer missionary, and author of the first general account of the land and its people. Never, in the wildest flight of imagination, could any layman have guessed the nature of the evangelising method on which this excellent man chiefly relied. It was—tooth-drawing!!! "Toothache," writes he, "resulting from severe malaria and from beetle-nut chewing, cigar-smoking, and other filthy habits, is the abiding torment of tens of thousands of both Chinese and aborigines … Our usual custom in touring through the country is to take our stand in an open space, often on the stone steps of a temple, and, after singing a hymn or two, proceed to extract teeth, and then preach the message of the gospel … I have myself, since 1873, extracted over twenty-one thousand, and the students and preachers have extracted nearly half that
