Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 236

1850.

Notice of Japan in the IIái-kwok Tú Chr.

2017

had requested. The siunfú, however, deputed messengers to speak them fair (or to put them off with fair words), so they made an offer to the Japanese in Formosa to pay them annually 30,000 deer-skins for a place of trade on that island. As the Japanese residing in For- mosa happened to have recently embraced Christianity, they con- sented forthwith; the Dutch raised the walls of Chihkán, the moderu market-town of Án-ping, there to dwell, and once having gotten their territory were constantly picking quarrels with them. The Japanese, on the other hand, who from the time they became imbued with their doctrines had never been victorious, went eastward (to Japan), with all belonging to them, and so excited were they against the Christian religion that they put to death all their own people who practiced it, and at the same time, restrained the inhabitants of Lewchew from fol- lowing it.

The Dutch having now obtained possession of Formosa set up Kweiyih,t and went no more to the eastward

Ching Chilung,|| a native of Fuhkien, who had married a woman of Japan, lived at Formosa with his family, and when the Japanese went last from that island, he equipped and inanned a fleet, and became a privateer. In the 2d year of Shunchí of the Tá Tsing dynasty (1645), he sent a memorial from Án-ping to tender his submission. His son, Ching Kihshwang escaped to sea, and in the latter years of the same reign attacked Formosa at the head of a fleet of several hun- dred sail; the Dutch, overpowered by numbers, withdrew to Batavia where they remained abiding their time. Such of the Formosans as still adhered to the Christian religion, and were called "the sect of the doctrine," Ching Kihshwang utterly annihilated.

utterly annihilated. At the com- mencement of the reign of K‘ánghí, he submitted, and the emperor pro- posed abandoning Formosa; but this was stoutly opposed by Shí-láng, who said that to abandon it would be to make the Dutch a present of it? It ended by its being divided into major and minor districts, and the fame [of the opposing statesman] has reached the present time.

* Most likely Fort Zealandia, a little to the north of the chief city of Thi-wán. Kweiyih, in the dialect of Fuhkien Kwei-it, probably means Coyet, the governor with whom the Fuhkien authorities corresponded upon the subject of putting down Koshinga.

t The East. The text does not sufficiently explain whether the east of the is- land of Formosa is meant, or the island of Japan ; a construction quite compatible with the writer's probable ignorance of the relative position of the two countries. || Ching Chilung, father of Ching Kihshwang, known as Koshinga, or, as the Portuguese write it, Koxinga. The father died in prison at Peking. The Dutch after 30 years' tenure were expelled in 1662, and the island of Formosa finally passed into the hands of the Chinese government in 1653. (See Chinese Repository, Vol. II. page 415.)