Ch. in.] POEMOSA LADIES. 45 



good-liumoured. It was my telescope, however, which caused 

 the greatest fwrore, and all in turn were treated to a peep 

 through it. Not in the least degree backward was the irre- 

 pressible boy, who, in Formosa as everywhere else, mairi- 

 taitied his character for impudence and inquisitiveness. We 

 became very popular, and water was brought us in a gourd, 

 and pine-apples produced, which assisted in extinguishing 

 hunger and thirst at the same time ; and when at length we 

 left the place we were escorted out of the village by a crowd 

 of gamins, to whom the day's excitement was something to 

 be talked about for a long time after. The girls and young 

 women, however, were timid and backward, sometimes 

 venturing into the skirts of the crowd to get a stolen look at 

 us, but immediately retreating to a safe distance if they saw 

 that they were observed. 



The women of the better class in this part of Formosa 

 dress in the most briUiant colours, and numerous parties 

 which we met walking out in the cool of the evening were 

 amusing impersonations of the Chinese pictures and figures 

 long familiar to us. The ladies, of whom, with children, 

 these parties usually consisted, were, hke all the females of 

 Formosa, small-footed, and supported their difficult and 

 tottering steps with a long walking-stick. Their dresses, 

 consisting of a wide-sleeved tunic, cut in the formal style 

 universal among Chinese ladies, were of the brightest scarlet, 

 blue, or orange, embroidered with black, which contrasted 

 well with the colour ; and their full trousers were of some 

 other equally showy material. In their hair, dressed in the 

 elaborate Chinese tea-pot fashion, they wore artificial flowers 

 made of the pith of the rice-paper plant, of Amoy manufac- 

 ture ; and as they walked painfully along, with the hobbling 

 gait peculiar to their hoof-like feet, their figures swaying to 



