English: Canoeing at Takow, Formosa.
The early Spanish navigators of the Chinese seas admired the wooded heights of a large island past which they sailed, nearly two hundred miles east of the mainland coast, to the north of the Philippines, and midway between the Gulf of Tonquin and the southern extremity of Japan. They called it Formosa, or "The Beautiful" — and its scenery deserves that name; but the Chinese call it Tai-wan. This island, opposite the Chinese ports of Amoy and Swatow, and far north-east of Hong-Kong, is little visited by European commerce. It is claimed as part of the Chinese Empire, but there are settlements onlt on the western coast. The native Malay population is supposed to exceed one million, chiefly inhabiting the hills in the interior and on the eastern shore; the island is about half the size of Ireland. A central range of volcanic mountains, with extinct craters, near the coast, rises to peaks 12,000 ft. high, and the lower ridges, near the coast, overlooking fertile and well-watered plains, are covered with forest verdure. Mr. Edmund Hornby Grimani, who resided some months at Takow, on the south-west coast, and made an excursion on horseback, with two friends from Bankimsing, a Pepuhuan village where there is a Spanish missionary college, into the highlands, furnishes us with as interesting description of some parts of the country, and with a series of Sketches. The first two Sketches, however, published this week, do not require so much comment. His residence was on the shore of a lagoon, where he delighted in paddling his own canoe along the banks overhung with profuse and diverse semi-tropical vegetation, the bamboo groves being most luxuriant in Formosa. An adventure on the journey above mentioned, in attempting to ford the Tang-Kang River, the approach to which is embarrassed by deep quicksands, is the subject of another Sketch; but we have more Illustrations in hand.