Page:Through China with a camera.pdf/193

 simple process, for the tub is in no way fixed to the raft, so that a heavy sea would, and does frequently, send it adrift. The tub into which we descended would hold four persons, and when we squatted down inside it we could just see over the top. Not feeling very comfortable, we came out and sat on the bare raft, to which we had at times to cling, fnanibus pedibusque^ as the waves broke over us.

Tai-wan-fu, the capital of Formosa, is a fortified city of 70,000 inhabitants. The walls enclose a space of about five miles, planted to a great extent with fields and gardens, and still showing traces of the ancient Dutch occupation, in the ruins of Fort Provincia and in the extensive parks shaded with fine old trees or groves of tall bamboo. The suburbs are intersected by a multitude of green lanes, which run between walls of cactus interspersed with the brilliant flowers of the wild fuchsia and clusters of major convolvulus, or else shaded by bamboo hedges, which form a pointed archway above the path. The inhabitants of this part of the island are chiefly natives of the Fukian province, and the Hak-kas already described. These between them are daily carrying arts and agriculture further into the territory claimed by the aboriginal tribes.

Armed with an official introduction I paid a visit to the chair outside his yamen while my card — a red one, the size of a large sheet of note-paper — was sent in, I found myself sur- rounded by the idle crowd that is always certain to collect about a stranger in China — whence the gazers came, and whither they would go, would be difficult to tell — and all sorts of conjectures being thrown out as to the nature of my business. A little naked boy, with a face full of perfectly untutored in-, nocent curiosity, ventured a trifle too near, so I leaned slightly
 * 'Taotai" (or governor) of Tai-wan (Formosa). Waiting in my