Sketches from Formosa.

94
SKETCHES FROM FORMOSA
established foreign Church in that direction,
it was
enough for him that it was influencing the people for good,
and was an institution which could not come within the
range of his own sympathy and control.
Before the commencement of our work at Peh-tsui-khe,
it was no uncommon occurrence for Gaw-chi-ko to order
out twenty or thirty of the Pe-po-hwan to work for him,
giving them in return a starvation allowance of rice, with
hard words and blows should any of them show unwilling-
ness to comply with his demands. His present policy
is to increase their burden tenfold, or do everything he can
to keep matters in stain quo. And yet, since those
aborigines have come under educational and Christian
influences, I can confidently say that it would be difficult
to find anywhere a more quiet, inoffensive, and law-
abiding people. Petty thieving with them is wholly a
thing of the past. They do not gamble now, and one
will listen in vain to hear bad language from the lips of
any of our converts. Even their heathen neighbours
acknowledge that, both in character and condition, the
Christians there have undergone a very marked change
for the better, while we ourselves regarded Peh-tsui-khe
as one of the most prosperous and hopeful of our fourteen
stations. During the past two months, our brethren had
been busy in preparing materials for the erection of a new
chapel, and it was when arranging
with them for the
completion of this work that a long course of petty
persecution ended in the more serious trouble now to be
referred to.
I left Taiwan-fu on I5th January, and spent the re-
mainder of that week at Peh-tsui-khe. Everything was
then quiet, excepting the usual rumours of an attack
by the gang at Tiam-a-khan, and of an objection which
Gaw-chi-ko had mentioned to some of our people against
their going on with the proposed new building. He said