Page:The journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London. Volume 34, 1864. (IA s572id13663720).pdf/211

Rh of a mountain into the river, in what was then, some forty years ago, savage territory. The savage hamlet in the neighbourhood was assaulted and the aborigines driven away. A tunnel was cut into the foot of the mountain, 16 yards long, 8 feet broad, and about 14 feet deep, and the course of the stream diverted by degrees into this. In the progress of the work the labourers were frequently attacked by savages, and about sixty of their number killed before its completion. The water, which is very sweet and fresh, is led in a prepared channel, maintaining a depth of from 3 to 4 feet, into the village of Kieng-bay, which, being built on the two high banks of an affluent of the main river, required an aqueduct to conduct the water across. A wooden aqueduct was accordingly built. It runs from bank to bank about 30 feet above the river, supported on a series of strong wooden crutches. From Kieng-bay this water-supply is led on to Banca, and thence to Twa-loo-tea, some 5 miles further. The line of demarcation between the territory of the Chinese and that of the aborigines is at once observable by the fine timbered hills that mark the hunting-grounds of the original possessors of the island. The Chinese territory is almost entirely denuded of trees, and cultivated on these interior hills mostly with the tea-plant, introduced from China. The absence of the primitive forest has naturally wrought a vast difference between the flora and fauna of the two territories. Coarse grass has covered the cleared hills, and the place of the woodland birds, the deer and the goat, has been supplied by larks and birds of the plain, and by pigs and hares. At the point I reached, the river divided the two lands, over which the savages were in the habit of coming in boats ferried by Chinese, to barter their wares. Across the river the lower wooded range was considered common land, and not suffered to be crossed except by permission from the chief of the clan.

From the end of November to the first few days of May rain and clouds are the order of the weather at Tamsuy; and on my arrival the mandarins assured me that the two first things usually provided for a visit to Northern Formosa are a good umbrella and a strong pair of boots. The dampness of the air makes it unpleasantly cold, though the thermometer shows a high temperature compared with the same latitude on the China coast. It is well known that the season of the north-east monsoons is one of continued, almost cloudless, sunshine, on the coast of the mainland from Foochow to Canton. It cannot, therefore, be doubted that the cause of constant rain in North Formosa is owing to its propinquity to the Pacific Gulf Stream, over whose heated waters the north-easterly wind blows before it reaches our island, and with its surcharge of moisture, coming in contact with the lofty Formosan mountain-range, and frequent high hills, is forced by