Sketches from Formosa.

172
SKETCHES FROM FORMOSA
was the very manifest preference which those early
European adventurers had for the Pescadores over the
fertile and immensely more extensive territory of
Formosa. The reasons are somewhat apparent. The
Pescadores have abundant harbour accommodation,
whereas Formosa had much better be shunned by any
one attempting to escape from the treacherous currents
and roaring typhoons of the China sea while their recent
;
at Macao made it natural that the Hollanders
experiences
should unanimously decide in favour of the Pescadores.
Here they would be only one day's sail from the mainland ;
here they would be within easy distance of the great
northern markets ; and here, above all, their insular
position would secure them against daily annoyance and
the fear of a sudden attack.
As it turned out, however, this grand scheme of the
Hollanders for crippling the Portuguese, and enriching
themselves by the establishment of an immense shipping
and commercial dep6t on the Pescadores, was not to be
realized, and the old ruined Dutch fort on the south side
of the entrance to Ma-keng Harbour still remains an
appropriate witness to the unscrupulousness and futility
of their attempt.
A long interval of fully two hundred and fifty years has
to be bridged over before reaching the only other occasion
when those islands became invested with anything like
a national importance. One quiet afternoon during the
Spring of 1885 the people of Formosa were startled on
hearing what seemed to them the sound of distant
thunder. It was not thunder, but the ponderous iron-
clads of France engaged in demolishing the fortifications
over against Fisher Island and Ma-keng. Those fortifi-
cations were mounted with good-sized guns of foreign
make, and occupied by several thousands of soldiers who
had been hastily called from various centres on the main-