174 
DEGENERATE POSTERITY OF COXINGA. 
IIS, and, as the keel grated with welcome harshness on the 
sand, we felt ourselves once more on shore. What if 
the boat was half full of water, and we like half-drowned 
rats ? we were still on shore. 
“We landed upon this strange and crowded beach 
without fear, simply from the fact that, while yet some 
distance off, we had 'readily recognised the natives as 
Chinese, and, although they were all armed with either 
the matchlock or bow and arrow, we knew too much 
of their race to anticipate violence. This crowd, which 
received us in a most noisy manner, was composed of 
men, women, and children, — the males of almost every 
age being araied. We had taken the precaution to bring 
one of our Chinese mess-boys with us; but, their language 
being neither the Mandarin, Canton, or Shanghae dialect, 
he at first found great difficulty in making himself 
understood. After a while, however, by the aid of the 
few words common to each and a fearful amount of 
violent pantomime on our part, we succeeded in exchang- 
ing ideas with tolerable freedom. 
“From all that we could learn from them in this way, 
it seems that they exist in a state of perpetual warfare 
with their savage neighbours of the east coast. The 
island being very narrow there, the latter find no diffi- 
culty in crossing the mountain-ridge which, like a huge 
backbone, divides the two territories, capturing cattle, 
making prisoners, burning isolated habitations, and then 
retreating into their mountain-fastnesses, where they arc 
never followed by their unwarlike victims. Thus we 
always found the latter armed with sword, matchlock, or 
bow and arrow, and confining themselves strictly to their 
