FORMOSA 159 



humidity of the climate during the greater portion of the 

 year. 



What may be described as the native population of 

 Formosa consists of no fewer than four classes of people, 

 viz : — 1st, the Aborigines of the Island who have been driven 

 inland by the emigrants from China, and who now occupy 

 the wooded hills and mountains of the interior, also the 

 Eastern seaboard. 2nd. Ping-poo-hwans, or savages, of the 

 plains, i.e. those Aborigines who originally occupied the 

 table-lands adjacent to the Coast, and who, by contact with 

 the Chinese, have now adopted to a more or less extent their 

 manners or customs, and who further owe allegiance to 

 China's Emperor. 3rd. Hakkas, a peculiar race of Chinese 

 emigrants, who were in their turn emigrants from the more 

 Northern to the Southern provinces of the Mainland. 4th. 

 Chinese from the opposite coast of China, and chiefly natives 

 of the Fuh-kien province. 



As to the peculiarities of these four classes, it may be 

 noted, that the Aborigines in appearance resemble the natives 

 of the Malay Archipelago, and, like them, are inclined to 

 slothful and indifferent habits. They appear to be split up 

 into several tribes; feuds are common amongst them, and 

 one and all are bitter enemies to the Chinese emigrants, 

 whom they only tolerate because, by means of a barter trade 

 with them, they obtain articles of raiment, arms, ammuni- 

 tion, and that greatest of necessaries, salt. They pay but 

 little attention to agriculture, being content to subsist on 

 mountain rice, sweet potatoes, and the products of the chase. 



The Ping-poo-hwans or tame savages, as they are now 

 called, are certainly improved by their inter-marriages and 

 intercourse with the Chinese, both as regards physique and 

 industrious habits. They still, however, retain their ab- 

 original simplicity of disposition, and on this account are 

 often the victims of Chinese duplicity. 



The Hakkas I may style the Scotch of the Chinese 

 emigrant element. Most industrious, keen in business, 

 daring in disposition, they are ever to the front when a new 

 tract of land is being colonised or where, by running more 

 than ordinary risk, they may succeed in establishing a new 

 border station. 



The Chinese, amongst whom are included the mercantile 

 and manufacturing classes, are as industrious and as keenly 

 alive to their own interests as their brethren of the mainland. 



The island and its people having now been roughly des- 

 cribed, I will give a short account of a journey, undertaken 

 during the dry weather of the Autumn of the year, 1873, 

 with a view of penetrating to the savage territory and seeing 



