Sketches from Formosa.

300
SKETCHES FROM FORMOSA
ceded national rights, is a maxim which has never received
very much countenance from the British Philistine or
Mr. Pecksniff.
But my remarks have already got beyond reasonable
limits and must be concluded with only two items more :
(1) It is quite admitted that recent changes have wrought
to the disadvantage of a very few well-to-do Europeans
in South Formosa ; such changes, for instance, as the
camphor production having
been taken under Govern-
ment control, the Japanese supplanting of our welcome,
although high-tariffed, little 55. Thales by a mail
steamer of their own, and the hopeful attempt now being
made by them to monopolize the profits of the sugartrade.
Surely, however, evolutions of this kind are but
" the fortune of war " and should excite neither surprise
nor ill-feeling in the mind of any right-thinking person ;
(2) My own belief is that a more sympathetic attitude
would be shown towards the Formosa Administration
have done
by outsiders were it known how much they
since Dr. Goto's arrival for the betterment of all classes
of the people. It is within my knowledge
that millions
of dollars have been spent on survey-work, road-making,
trolly and railway lines, Postal Telegraph and Telephone
stations, Military, Police and Civil establishments ;
besides large Government outlay on Primary and Higher
Schools, Hospitals and Lighthouses ; as well as in pro-
viding a regular service of steamers round the Island and
to the Pescadores. And let it be observed that all this
is but the harbinger of still greater progress in the near
future for I am convinced that Formosa will ;
yet become
a most valuable possession ; and that, so far as my
somewhat widely-extended observations go, the servants
of the Government are faithfully and without noise
striving to hasten the consummation.
It is just possible that readers who see nothing amiss