I.] TAMSUI. 19 



two or three representatives of Engiisli firms reside. In the 

 neighbourhood, rice, sugar, indigo, and tea are gTown, and camphor 

 is obtained from those districts where the virgin forest has not as 

 yet given place to cultivation. The export of the last-named 

 article has of late years been decreasing, possibly owing to the 

 amount of risk which attends its acquisition. The savages are 

 ever on the alert near the edge of the jungle. A Chinaman's head 

 is to them a sort of patent of nobility, for without one they are 

 excluded from the council of their tribe. Poor Johnny collects his 

 camphor in fear and trembling, and never knows but that the 

 setting sun may find his pigtail dangling at the knife-sheath of an 

 exultant savage, who is busying himself at the fire hard by in the 

 cooking and proper preparation of his cranium. 



Tamsui is an uninteresting port, in spite of the spur of the 

 high northern range of Formosa which rises above it to the height 

 of a couple of thousand feet or more. We were relieved to find 

 that the MarcJiesa was safely at anchor in the harbour, for we had 

 been somewhat anxious as to the possibility of her entrance. The 

 bar is a very shallow one, having only eight feet of water at low tide. 

 At high water, however, a further rise of a little over seven feet had 

 just enabled her to cross it, though she could not have had more than 

 three or four inches to spare beneath her keel. The great draught of 

 the Marchesa was, in the following year, a con^ant source of anxiety 

 to us in the navigation of the little known waters of New Guinea 

 and the Malay Archipelago, for which a vessel of the type of an 

 ordinary coasting steamer would have been far better suited. 



The old Spanish fort, built nearly three centuries ago, is a 

 conspicuous object, perched half-way up a hill on the eastern side 

 of the harbour. It is now turned into our Consul's office. The 

 red brick walls are of prodigious thickness, and, entrenched behind 

 them, one could defy the grilling heat to better purpose than, in 

 days gone by, the Hollanders had resisted the attacks of that fine 

 old freebooter Koksinga, the Chinese pirate, who eventually swept 

 them off" the island. Pleasant enough it was to rest here, lazily 



