Formosa and Its Islands

THE SOIL, FRUITS AND ANIMALS OF THE FORMOSA ISLANDS

Monmouth and Grafton Isles are very hilly, with many of those steep inhabited precipices on them that I shall describe particularly. The two small islands are flat and even; only the Bashee Island has one steep scraggy hill, but Goat Island is all flat and very even.

The mould of these islands in the valley is blackish in some places, but in most red. The hills are very rocky: the valleys are well watered with brooks of fresh water which run into the sea in many different places.

The soil is indifferent fruitful, especially in the valleys; producing pretty great plenty of trees (though not very big) and thick grass.

The sides of the mountains have also short grass, and some of the mountains have mines within them; for the natives told us that the yellow metal they showed us (as I shall speak more particularly) came from these mountains; for when they held it up they would point towards them.

The fruit of these islands are a few plantains, bananas, pineapples, pumpkins, sugarcane, etc., and there might be more if the natives would, for the ground seems fertile enough. Here are great plenty of potatoes, and yams, which is the common food for the natives for bread kind: for those few plantains they have are only used as fruit. They have some cotton growing here of the small plants.

Here are plenty of goats and abundance of hogs; but few fowls, either wild or tame. For this I have always observed in my travels, both in the East and West Indies, that in those places where there is plenty of grain, that is, of rice in one and maize in the other, there are also found great abundance of fowls; but on the contrary few fowls in those countries where the inhabitants feed on fruits and roots only. The few wild fowls that are here are parakeets and some other small birds. Their tame fowl are only a few cocks and hens.

THE INHABITANTS AND THEIR CLOTHING

Monmouth and Grafton Islands have many people. Bashee Island has one town on it.

The natives of these islands are short squat people; they are generally round-visaged, with low foreheads and thick eyebrows; their eyes of a hazel colour and small, yet bigger than the Chinese; short low noses and their lips and mouths middle proportioned; their teeth are white; their hair is black, and thick, and lank, which they wear but short; it will just cover their ears, and so it is cut round very even. Their skins are of a very dark copper colour.

They wear no hat, cap, nor turban, nor anything to keep off the sun. The men for the biggest part have only a small clout to cover their nakedness; some of them have jackets made of plantain leaves which were as rough as any bear’s skin: I never saw such rugged things. The women have a short petticoat made of cotton which comes a little below their knees. It is a thick sort of stubborn cloth which they make themselves of their cotton.

RINGS OF A YELLOW METAL LIKE GOLD.

Both men and women do wear large earrings made of that yellow metal before mentioned. Whether it were gold or no I cannot positively say; I took it to be so, it was heavy and of the colour of our paler gold. I would fain have brought away some to have satisfied my curiosity; but I had nothing where with to buy any.

Captain Read bought two of these rings with some iron, of which the people are very greedy; and he would have bought more, thinking he was come to a very fair market, but that the paleness of the metal made him and his crew distrust its being right gold.

For my part I should have ventured on the purchase of some, but having no property in the iron, of which we had great store on board sent from England by the merchants along with Captain Swan, I durst not barter it away.

These rings when first polished look very gloriously, but time makes them fade and turn to a pale yellow. Then they make a soft paste of red earth and, smearing it over their rings, they cast them into a quick fire where they remain till they be red hot; then they take them out and cool them in water and rub off the paste; and they look again of a glorious colour and lustre.

THEIR HOUSES BUILT ON REMARKABLE PRECIPICES.

These people make but small low houses. The sides, which are made of small posts wattled with boughs, are not above 4 foot and a half high: the ridge-pole is about 7 or 8 foot high. They have a fireplace at one end of their houses and boards placed on the ground to lie on.

They inhabit together in small villages built on the sides and tops of rocky hills, 3 or 4 rows of houses, one above another and on such steep precipices that they go up to the first row with a wooden ladder, and so with a ladder still from every storey up to that above it, there being no way to ascend.

The plain on the first precipice may be so wide as to have room both for a row of houses that stand all along on the edge or brink of it, and a very narrow street running along before their doors, between the row of houses and the foot of the next precipice; the plain of which is in a manner level to the tops of the houses below, and so for the rest.

The common ladder to each row or street comes up at a narrow passage left purposely about the middle of it; and the street, being bounded with a precipice also at each end, it is but drawing up the ladder if they be assaulted, and then there is no coming at them from below, but by climbing up against a perpendicular wall: and, that they may not be assaulted from above, they take care to build on the side of such a hill whose back side hangs over the sea, or is some high, steep, perpendicular precipice, altogether inaccessible.

These precipices are natural; for the rocks seem too hard to work on; nor is there any sign that art has been employed about them. On Bashee island there is one such, and built upon, with its back next the sea.

Grafton and Monmouth isles are very thick set with these hills and towns; and the natives, whether for fear of pirates, or foreign enemies, or factions among their own clans, care not for building but in these fastnesses; which I take to be the reason that Orange Isle, though the largest, and as fertile as any, yet being level and exposed has no inhabitants. I never saw the like precipices and towns.

THEIR BOATS AND EMPLOYMENTS.

These people are pretty ingenious also in building boats. Their small boats are much like our deal yawls but not so big; and they are built with very narrow plank pinned with wooden pins and some nails. They have also some pretty large boats which will carry 40 or 50 men. These they row with 12 or 14 oars of a side. They are built much like the small ones and they row doubled-banked; that is, two men setting on one bench, but one rowing on one side, the other on the other side of the boat. They understand the use of iron and work it themselves. Their bellows are like those at Mindanao. The common employment for the men is fishing; but I did never see them catch much: whether it is more plenty at other times of the year I know not. The women do manage their plantations.

I did never see them kill any of their goats or hogs for themselves, yet they would beg the paunches of the goats that they themselves did sell to us: and if any of our surly seamen did heave them into the sea they would take them up again and the skins of the goats also. They would not meddle with hogs’ guts if our men threw away any besides what they made chitterlings and sausages of.

The goat-skins these people would carry ashore, and making a fire they would singe off all the hair, and afterwards let the skin lie and parch on the coals till they thought it eatable; and then they would gnaw it and tear it in pieces with their teeth, and at last swallow it.

The paunches of the goats would make them an excellent dish; they dressed it in this manner. They would turn out all the chopped grass and crudities found in the maw into their pots, and set it over the fire and stir it about often: this would smoke and puff, and heave up as it was boiling; wind breaking out of the ferment and making a very savoury stink.

While this was doing, if they had any fish, as commonly they had two or three small fish, these they would make very clean (as hating nastiness belike) and cut the flesh from the bone, and then mince the flesh as small as possibly they could, and when that in the pot was well boiled they would take it up and, strewing a little salt into it, they would eat it, mixed with their raw minced flesh. The dung in the maw would look like so much boiled herbs minced very small; and they took up their mess with their fingers, as the Moors do their pillaw, using no spoons.

PARCHED LOCUSTS

They had another dish made of a sort of locusts, whose bodies were about an inch and a half long and as thick as the top of one’s little finger; with large thin wings and long and small legs.

At this time of the year these creatures came in great swarms to devour their potato leaves and other herbs; and the natives would go out with small nets and take a quart at one sweep.

When they had enough they would carry them home and parch them over the fire in an earthen pan; and then their wings and legs would fall off and their heads and backs would turn red like boiled shrimps, being before brownish.

Their bodies being full would eat very moist, their heads would crackle in one’s teeth. I did once eat of this dish and liked it well enough; but their other dish my stomach would not take.

BASHEE, OR SUGAR-CANE DRINK.

Their common drink is water; as it is of all other Indians: besides which they make a sort of drink with the juice of the sugar-cane, which they boil, and put some small black sort of berries among it. When it is well boiled they put it into great jars and let it stand three or four days and work.

Then it settles and becomes clear, and is presently fit to drink. This is an excellent liquor, and very much like English beer, both in colour and taste.

It is very strong and not very wholesome. Our men, who drank briskly of it all day for several weeks, were frequently drunk with it, and never sick after it.

The natives brought a vast deal of it every day to those aboard and ashore: for some of our men were ashore at work on Bashee Island; which island they gave that name to from their drinking this liquor there; that being the name which the natives called this liquor by: and as they sold it to our men very cheap so they did not spare to drink it as freely.

From the plenty of this liquor our men called all these the Bashee Islands.