Sketches from Formosa.

Il6 SKETCHES FROM FORMOSA
our right within sight. The Consul and our travelling
companion lay down on the grass, having their loaded
firearms within reach, and I quietly crept in between
them. The dew gave us a thorough drenching, but after
munching a few biscuits at daybreak, we set out again
in the hope of reaching Po-li-sia before sunset.
Our road was a mere winding path, with tall, prickly
grass on either side, so that we had to walk single file.
After getting on comfortably for some miles, we turned,
on hearing sounds, to see about a dozen armed natives
gliding out from the grass and commencing to walk
behind us. Several miles further on, this party was
joined by some twenty more. We therefore halted and
tried to act towards them in a friendly way, but they
were all very sulky, and refused to make any response.
About 2 p.m. the armed party behind us had increased
to between fifty and sixty braves, whereupon we stepped
out, and signed that they should all walk in front ;
which
attempt, however, met with such a resolute and nasty
refusal that we had to set forward again at the head of
the procession. Two or three miles further on brought
us to a little open plain, having tall grass on the left,
and a deep, rushing river about a hundred yards wide to
the right, from the further bank of which there rose a
beetling cliff about two hundred feet in height. The
three of us then sat down on stones at that end of the
plain we came first to, and the armed band gathered in
a semicircle around us. There was a moment of severe
tension and of deadly silence, as we watched for that
signal which would end in the three of us being hacked
to pieces. But, after a long apprenticeship in Central
Brazil and many a lonely island of the Pacific, there was
one member of the party who knew how to deal with
savages. Our American friend, Mr. Steere, is a lean,
big-boned man, stands about six feet four inches in his