Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Notes of an Overland Journey Through the Southern Part of Formosa, from Takow to the South Cape, in 1875, with an Introductory Sketch of the Island

1885; Volume: 7; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1800331

0266-626X

M BEAZELEY,

Japanese History and Culture

Recent proceedings at Formosa have prominently directed attention to that island, and invested it with an interest beyond what it has hitherto commanded.With the political part of those proceedings we, as geo? graphers, are happily not concerned; but their probable results to geographical science concern us very nearly, and there can be little doubt that the occupation of the principal ports by one of the great European Powers will sooner or later lead to a more or less systematic Exploration of the island.And as even from calamities some good may be extracted if only one knows how to set about it, so this occupation may ultimately produce the beneficial result of increasing our knowledge of the geography, geology, and natural products of, and general acquaintance with, a most inviting and hitherto but little known and almost unexplored region.*That such a large and important island as Formosa should have remained to the present day so little known is very remarkable; for lying, as it does, like a breakwater off the mainland, right in the traffic between the north and south of China, visited and traded.with by the Spanish f and Portuguese in the sixteenth century?actually ceded to and held by the Dutch for some years in the seventeenth, and opened by the Treaty of Tientsin to foreign commerce in 1860, it should by this time * Mr. Cuthbert Collingwood, m.a.