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ART. II.-The Cruise of the Marchesa' to Kamschatka and New Guinea; with Notices of Formosa, Liu-kiu, and various Islands of the Malay Archipelago. By F. H. H. GUILLEMARD, M.A., M.D. (Cantab.) In two vols. London: 1886. N the collection of fables in Sanskrit, known as the Pañchatantra, i.e. five volumes,' it is said that he 'who does not go forth and explore all the earth which is 'full of many wonderful things is a well-frog;' or in the neatly versified rendering of a modern scholar—

IN

'The incurious men at home who dwell,
And foreign lands with all their store
Of various wonders, ne'er explore,
Are simply frogs within a well.'

Certainly Dr. Guillemard is no well-frog; on the contrary, the author of the work before us-one of the most attractive books of travel ever published as a record of English exploration-has, Ulysses-like, wandered far in distant lands, and in two handsome volumes has given us an extremely interesting account of his adventures and the results of his scientific investigations.

'Ignotis errare locis, ignota videre

Flumina gaudebat, studio minuente laborem.'*

The Marchesa,' an auxiliary screw schooner-yacht of 429 tons, Mr. C. T. Kettlewell being captain and owner, left Cowes on January 8, 1882; she visited Ceylon, Formosa, the Liu-Kiu Islands, Japan, Hongkong, the little known islands of the Sulu Archipelago, and the territory of the North Borneo Company. Returning to Singapore to take in stores, the Marchesa' then proceeded to Sumbawa, Celebes, and other islands of the Malay Archipelago and to New Guinea; she returned to Southampton on April 14, 1884. Dr. Guillemard gives an interesting account of his visit to the island of Formosa, but a few days only could be spared for a visit. The western half of the island is chiefly occupied by Chinese, while the eastern portion is inhabited by aborigines, of whom an old writer in his Account of the Island Formosa ' says: You must know that these natives are very wild and barbarous, and that, a certain ship called the "Golden 'Lion" being driven upon the coast by tempest, they killed the captain and most of his crew.' This reputation the

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* Ovid. Met. iv. 294.

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natives fully deserve to this day, for certain death awaited every one shipwrecked on the eastern and southern shores of the island for many years, the head-hunting propensities of some of the Formosans being as keen as those of any 'Dyak.' In 1867 the United States consul at Amoy concluded a treaty with Tok-e-tok, the chief of the southern tribes, by which the latter engaged to protect any stranger who might land, and to permit the erection of a fort as a refuge for shipwrecked mariners. In 1881 a lighthouse was erected at Nan-sha, the extreme south of the island, and this part of Formosa, we are told, may now be con'sidered tolerably safe, but for any one in search of adventure the east coast still remains open. It is more than doubtful, however, whether the results of the explorer's experiences would ever be given to the world.' The gorges and precipices on the east coast of Formosa must be extremely grand.

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'There are few more stupendous cliffs than those of the Yosemite Valley in California, and if any one wishes for a sensation of height, combined with others, to a novice, of a less pleasing nature, he has only to

hang half-way down.

As one that gathers samphire-dreadful trade'

in search of birds' eggs over the grand sea wall of Hoy in the Orkneys. I have dropped my pebble over the edge of the 2,000 feet of perpendicularity which the Penha d'Aguia, in Madeira, opposes to the Atlantic surges, and have admired the glories of the ironbound coast of Norway. But all these fade into nothingness beside the giant precipices of Formosa.'

Keelung and Tamsui in the north of the island are the principal harbours; the former town partly owes its prosperity to the proximity of some coal beds, which the Chinese have for a long time worked in the most primitive 'fashion;' shafts were abandoned from having become flooded. English miners were imported in 1876, and since that time the output has been steadily increasing, as much as 500 tons per diem being an estimated quantity. The country round Keelung is charming in its rich green dress of bamboo groves and paddy; but the odours of the town, which Mr. Taintor has stigmatised as the 'filthiest town in 'the universe,' are probably unrivalled.

'Japan in summer is unpleasant; China more than occasionally oversteps the limits of our powers of endurance; but for breadth and expression, for solidity, tone, and execution, the perfumes of Keelung must rank far above those of either. Here the sanitary inspector

existeth not, and carbolic is a thing unknown. No respectable disease can complain of not having a fair field. By all the laws that modern science has taught us, by all our researches in micro-organisms, by every sacred axiom of medicine, we can confidently predict the certain death of every inhabitant in the course of the next two or three days, although, with the habitual caution of a physician, we may admit the possibility of one or two of the strongest lingering until the end of the week. But next day everything is as usual, and the fat old gentleman who constructs the queer little boats that in China do duty for coffins does not seem to be suffering from any particular press of business.'

The island of Formosa, a third part of which only lies within the tropics, is about 210 miles long and seventy broad. The soundings in the Formosa Strait, which separates the island from the mainland of China opposite Foochow, show the island to be connected with the mainland by a submarine bank submerged to a depth of not more than twenty to forty fathoms. The eastern face of the island, on the contrary, abuts immediately upon a deep sea, soundings of more than a thousand fathoms being found within a short distance of its shores. Here, then, we have the 'eastern limit of the vast continent with which at no very ' remote geological period the islands of Borneo and Sumatra were also united.' The zoology of Formosa leads to the same conclusion. The study of the Formosan avi-fauna' shows that this tendency to Indian and Malayan ' rather than to Chinese forms is most striking.' In Formosa there are forty-three species peculiar to the island-an enormous number, as our author says, considering the fact that the Chinese coast is barely sixty miles distant-and of these twenty are representatives of regions other than the adjacent mainland. The same tendency is noticeable among the mammals. These facts, as the late Mr. Swinhoe and the illustrious Mr. Wallace have shown, would lead us to conclude that

'Formosa should be classed among the recent continental islands, and also that at the time of its connection with the mainland the ancestors of the Formosan, Indian, and Malayan forms were equally dispersed throughout the intervening, and at that time undivided, continent. After the separation of Formosa and the Malayan Islands, the altered geological and climatological conditions were such as to cause the disappearance of many forms of animal life, except in localities where the required conditions, such as dense forests or high mountain ranges, still remained. The immense number of peculiar species, however, tends to show that Formosa must have become detached from the mainland at some tolerably remote period, for we know, from a consideration of our own as well as of other islands, that

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the progress of formation of a species is one of a by no means rapid character.'

There are no active volcanoes in Formosa, but constant evidences of volcanic action throughout the island show that it forms a link in the great chain which runs from Kamschatka southward to the Philippine Islands. Hot springs and solfataras are found near Tamsui, and sulphur, though forbidden by the Chinese Government, is produced and exported to Hongkong. The three or four millions of Chinese that people Formosa gain their living chiefly as cultivators of the varied vegetable products of the rich soil. They are not a mining people. The country produces enormous quantities of rice in the plains and also sugar; in jute, indigo, tobacco, tea, grass cloth fibre, rattans, and rice-paper so called,* a considerable trade is carried on. The dense primeval forests of Formosa produce an almost inexhaustible supply of camphor. The tree which yields the camphor of commerce is a kind of laurel (Camphora officinarum), and the Chinese inhabitants of Formosa steadily advance in their search for this valuable wood, which fetches high prices at Hongkong and other Chinese ports, but the export of late years has steadily diminished owing to the hostility of the natives, for additional ground is only gained at the cost of many a Chinaman's head.' Formosa, though not strictly tropical, is extremely hot; the rainfall in the north and east is very heavy during the prevalence of the north-eastern monsoon. From November to the end of April more than one hundred inches fall at Tamsui, due to the Kurosiwo, or Japanese current, the gulf-stream of the East. As the monsoon blows over this heated water, and comes in contact with the great mountain ranges in the north and centre of the island, a surcharge of moisture is precipitated, and to the eastern coasts of China Formosa acts as a sort of um'brella,' and the winter and spring in those Chinese districts are a period of almost uninterrupted sunshine. Notwithstanding its pleasant European name, Formosa, being no

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The so-called rice-paper used by the Chinese for painting on is the pith of a plant of the Ivy family, the Aralia papyrifera of Sir William Hooker. Dr. Guillemard says it is peculiar to Formosa, and grows wild in many parts of the island. It is pared concentrically by hand, and the thin sheets produced are moistened and joined at the edges, and finally pressed and dried, when it is ready for the Chinese artist to depict upon it the discords in red and green he so generally affects.'

stranger to climatic eccentricities of various kinds, does not hold out any inducement as a place of home residence; the 'visitor, unless he be a naturalist, will subscribe to the 'opinion once expressed before the Geographical Society by 'a distinguished traveller, that Formosa, like Ireland, is a 6 very good country to live out of.'

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From Formosa the Marchesa' proceeded to the Liu-Kiu (Loochoo) group of islands which lie 250 miles E.N.E. of Formosa. These islands have been seldom visited by Europeans, as they lie far out of the beaten track, and the inhabitants are disinclined to permit the exploration of their country. They were visited by Captain Basil Hall in 1816, who gives the first detailed account in later times, in his "Voyage of the "Alceste" and "Lyra;" he describes the inhabitants as a quiet and peaceloving race, to whom traders, rum, guns, and other implements of civilisation are practically unknown, and whose natural tendencies seem to be towards virtue rather than vice. The voyagers of the 'Marchesa' were curious to know how far the changes of three quarters of a century had served to destroy the many charms of the self-styled nation that observes propriety;' and happily, as Dr. Guillemard says, they were not doomed to be disenchanted. Commodore Perry, an American, whose account, however, of the character of the inhabitants does not tally with that given by Captain Basil Hall-for he says the people are ignorant, cunning, and insincere-visited this group of islands in 1854, and spent several months in Okinawa-sima, the largest island of the archipelago; he established a treaty between the two countries, in which the Liu-Kiuans agreed to show all courtesy to vessels sailing under the American flag. These islands are partially volcanic and form one of 'the links in the great plutonic chain that skirts the eastern ' shores of Asia and, passing southward through the Philip'pines and Moluccas, joins the southern and yet more re'markable belt which traverses Sumatra, Java, and the islands 'to the eastward.' Landing at Napha-Kiang on an excellently built pier in the inner harbour, the voyagers were beset by crowds of natives whom curiosity had attracted. It was with the utmost difficulty that they were able to make way through the dense mass of humanity which surrounded them, but there was no disorder or horseplay, such as 'would have been the case in England;' not a single woman was visible, but children perched on their fathers' shoulders regarded the visitors with solemn infantine wonder and quiet approval. The streets have a most peculiar appearance, for

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