Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VII.djvu/330

 322 FORMOSA FORNEY try " 22 different ways of preparing it are given. Samuel Fischer was the first to make it by distilling ants, and Berthelot was the first to prepare it from inorganic materials. FORMOSA (Port, llha Formosa, beautiful isl- and ; Malay, Pelcan or Pekando ; Chinese, Tai-wan, the terraced harbor), an island in the China sea, between lat. 21 58' and 25 15' N., and Ion. 120 and 122 E., separated from the Chinese province of Fokien by a channel 90 m. wide ; length 240 m., greatest breadth about T5 m. ; area about 15,000 sq. m. ; pop. estima- ted at from 2,000,000 to 3,000,000. A range of mountains occupies the eastern part, run- ning from N". to S. through its entire length. As some of the summits are covered with perpetual snow, their height cannot be less than 12,000 ft. Among these mountains are several extinct volcanoes, and sulphur, naph- tha, and other volcanic products are found. The E. coast is high and bold, and is entirely destitute of harbors. The "W. shore is flat, and has some good ports accessible to vessels of moderate draught. The W. part is a very fer- tile, well cultivated plain. The chief produc- tions are rice, sugar, camphor, tobacco, wheat, maize, beans, radishes, pepper, coffee, tea, indigo, cotton, flax, silk, and oranges, peaches, plums, and a great variety of other fruits. The wild animals are leopards, tigers, wolves, and deer. The ox and buffalo are used in tillage, and horses, asses, sheep, goats, and hogs are numerous. Gold is found in the mountains, and there are mines of bituminous coal in the N. part. Sulphur and salt are also found. The commerce of the island with the mainland of China is very extensive. The exports are rice, sugar, beans, sulphur, camphor, and timber. It imports saltpetre, opium, and manufactured goods. Of late years it has been much visited by American ships for purposes of trade. The western and most fertile part of the island is inhabited by Chinese, who have emigrated to Formosa in great numbers during the last two or three centuries. They are industrious and prosperous, skilful cultivators of the soil, and enterprising merchants. The Chinese portion of the island is a part of the province of Fo- kien, the governor residing at Taiwang-foo, a city of about 100,000 inhabitants. In virtue of treaties four ports have been thrown open to commerce, Tanshui and Kelung on the north, and Takao and Taiwang-foo on the W. side. The E. and mountainous part of Formosa is inde- pendent of the Chinese, and is inhabited by a warlike race of copper-colored barbarians, of whom the Chinese are in great dread, and with whom they are almost constantly at war. They are probably of the Malay division of mankind. They wear their hair long, h'ave rings in their ears, and are clothed only with a piece of cotton stuff wrapped about the mid- dle. They dwell in bamboo cottages raised on terraces 3 or 4 ft. high. They have no written language, and do not appear to have any priest- hood. Their government is patriarchal, petty chiefs and councils of elders ruling them in the manner of the American Indians. Their arms are lances, bows and arrows, and a few Chi- nese matchlocks. In their language the island is termed Kaboski, and also Gadavia. Their number is not supposed to exceed 20,000. Some of these people have been subdued by the Chinese, and are kept in small villages in a kind of prsedial servitude. The Chinese seem to have had no settlements in Formosa before the 15th century. In 1582 a Spanish ship was wrecked there, and the survivors brought the first account of the island to Europe. About 1634 the Dutch took possession of it and built several forts and factories ; but in 1662 they were driven out by a famous Chinese pirate, Coxinga, who made himself king of the W. part, and transmitted the sovereignty to his descendants, who, however, submitted in 1683 to the authority of the Chinese emperor, to whom it has since been tributary. The Chinese colonists have frequently rebelled, and in 1788 an insurrection broke out which cost the impe- rial government 100,000 lives and an immense expenditure of money before it was suppressed. Psalmanazar, whose extraordinary imposture excited so much attention in England at the beginning of the last century, pretended to be a native of Formosa, and published an account of the island which was entirely fictitious. Commodore Perry, who from 1852 to 1854 was employed by the government of the United States in concluding commercial treaties with China, Japan, and Siam, called attention to the importance of Formosa ; and since then scien- tific expeditions have been sent out by the gov- ernments of England and Prussia, to survey the coast and to explore parts of the island with a view to establishing naval stations or colonies. FORNAR1NA, La (the baker girl), the appella- tion of the reputed mistress of Raphael, and celebrated as the model of many of his pictures. She was the daughter of a baker residing in Rome near the church of St. Cecilia. Raphael, having accidentally seen her while she was washing her feet in the river, is said to have fallen in love with her. The most famous of the alleged likenesses of her are in Raphael's great fresco of Heliodorus, in his Parnassus in the Vatican as Clio, in his "Agony of St. Ce- cilia," and in his "Transfiguration." His pic- ture " La Fornarina " is supposed by Passavant to be intended for the improvvisatrice Beatrice Pio, and the same biographer of Raphael doubts the story of the former having been his mistress. FORNEY, John Weiss, an American journal- ist, born at Lancaster, Pa., Sept. 30, 1817. In 1833 he became an apprentice in the printing office of the Lancaster "Journal," and in 1837 editor and joint proprietor of the Lancaster "Intelligencer;" and in 1840 he united that paper with the "Journal." He removed in 1845 to Philadelphia, where he was long the editor of the "Pennsylvanian," one of the most decided of the democratic journals. In