FORMOSA THE BEAUTIFUL 



251 



A DUCK-TENDER GIVING HIS BROODS A SWIM 



Formosans are extremely fond of ducks. On a walk through country districts the 

 traveler frequently encounters a youth with a long pole acting as tender for two or three 

 hundred, sometimes a thousand, birds which have no special feeding ground, but wander over 

 the countryside, eating and drinking wherever they choose. 



scene in Formosa's opium monopoly bureau: the round balls of crude 



opium are imported from india and the flat 



parcels come from persia 



Opium smoking is controlled by license. About 2 per cent of the Chinese in Formosa 

 are still addicted to the habit, but year by year the practice is being checked. The island has 

 a population of more than 3,600,000, more than 92 per cent of whom are classified as 

 "Formosans," mainly people of Chinese blood : a little more than 3 per cent are Japanese, and 

 ZV2 per cent are aborigines ("ripe" and "raw" savages; see text, page 272). 



