Sketches from Formosa.

XXXIX
ORDINATION AT AW-GU-LAN
IN order to give completeness to the present sketch, I
may remind my readers that the Po-li-sia Plain lies
among the mountains two days' journey eastward from
Chiang-hoa city. There are some thirty little villages
scattered over it, having an aggregate population of ten
thousand adults. They belong to the Sek-hwan branch
of the civilized aborigines of Formosa ; the other (southern)
branch being the Pi-po-hwan, or aborigines of the level
country, as the name implies. Mr. W. A. Pickering,
late Government Protector of Chinese at Singapore, was
the first European to bring those Po-li-sia aborigines
within notice of the outer world ; for it was while
travelling in Central Formosa that he induced three or
four of them to set out on the long walk to our Taiwan-fu
Mission Hospital, then in charge of Drs. Maxwell and
Dickson.
The name of a devoted colleague, the late Rev. H.
Ritchie, ought also to be remembered in connection with
the commencement of Christian work in Po-li-sia. He
accompanied the first missionary party to the place, and
baptized the earliest converts there in 1872. The work
thus begun at the village of Aw-gu-lan soon spread to
other centres, until we had four little congregations
meeting every Lord's day in as many of the villages ;
those congregations having collectively an adult bap-
tized membership of about one hundred and sixty persons.
As the Sek-hwan are a simple, easily-influenced people,
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