Directory_and_Chronicle_1938 — Page 375

FORMOSA

This island, one of the largest in Asia, is situated between latitude 22 and 26 degrees N., and longitude 120 and 122 degrees E., and is separated from the coast of Fukien, China, by a channel about one hundred miles in width. It is a prolongation of the Japanese and Loochoo, Archipelagoes, and in 1895 was incorporated in the Japanese Empire. Its name Formosa, signifying "beautiful island," was conferred by the Portuguese, the first Europeans to visit it, but it was called Taiwan (Great Bay) by the Chinese, to whom it belonged from 1661 to 1894. It is said that the Japanese endeavoured to form a colony in the island in 1620, but large numbers of Chinese were settled there prior to that date. The Dutch arrived in 1634, and founded several settlements, and traces of their occupation are still to be found in the island, but they were compelled in 1661 to retire by the Chinese pirate chief Koxinga, who then assumed the sovereignty of western Formosa. His grandson and successor, however, was induced, twenty-two years later, to resign the crown to the Emperor of China. By the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which terminated the war between China and Japan in 1895, the island was ceded to Japan as

as one of the conditions of peace, and on the 1st June, 1895, the formal surrender was made, the ceremony taking place on board ship outside Keelung. The resident Chinese, officials, however, declared a republic, and offered resistance, and it was not until the end of October that the oppos- ing forces were completely overcome, the last stand being made in the south by Liu Yung-fu, the Black Flag General, of Tonkin notoriety. Takow was bombarded and captured on 15th October, and Anping was peacefully occupied on the 21st of the same month, Liu Yung-fu having taken refuge in flight.

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Formosa is about 260 miles in length, and from 60 to 70 miles broad in the widest part. It is intersected from north to south by a range of mountains, which forms a kind of backbone to the island, the loftiest peak of which, Mount Morrison (Niitakayama), is 13,580 feet high. On the western side of this range the slope is more gradual than on the eastern side, and broken by fertile valleys which lose themselves in the large undulating plain on which the Chinese are settled. The high land east of the dividing chain is peopled by an aboriginal race who acknowledge no allegiance to the Chinese Govern- ment and made frequent raids upon the outlying Chinese settlements, but as the island is being steadily opened up conditions are improving, and doubtless in course of time they will become merged in the general popula- tion, although naturally a savage and warlike people, allied to the Malays and Polyneisians, who lived principally by the chase.

The population of Formosa in 1932 was estimated to be 4,932,033, comprised of Natives 4,496,820, Japanese 247,580; Koreans 559; Savages 144,866, Foreign (Chinese) 42, 017; and Foreign (others) 191.

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The products of Formosa are numerous, vegetation being everywhere most luxuriant, testifying to the richness of the soil. Tea, camphor, rice, sugar and bananas are largely cultivated, the three latter being extensively shipped to Japan. The fauna includes bears, monkeys, deer, wild boar, badgers, martens, the scaly ant-eater and other smaller animals. Birds are not very numerous, and snakes not as common as might be expected where vegetation is so abundant. As regards minerals there are at present only two gold mines running is, those at Kinkasaki and Zuiho in the vicinity of Keelung), and the production of both Gold and Silver in Taiwan has decreased, as they are being shipped to Japan in the form of Ores. The island has an area of about 13,883 square miles of which more than half is mountain, but nevertheless 21.5 per cent. is cultivated land and over 58 per cent. of the population are farmers.

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