Sketches from Formosa.

314
SKETCHES FROM FORMOSA
appearance beside the beautiful seal-impressions
of the
Prefect and his subordinates ; so there was nothing for
it but to order about sixteen little wooden seals, have
fresh documents drawn up, and to cover them with an
amount of red stamping that might have sufficed for
the purchase of Westminster Abbey !
I can truly say it
was a relief to me when I was able to forward sets of the
registered deeds of all our Po-li-sia property for preservation
in the Mission safe at headquarters in Tainan.
The same process had subsequently to be gone through
at ten other towns and villages on the Western side of the
Prefecture, but there also the officials acted in a very
courteous and helpful way. This was found to be
especially the case at Chiang-hoa and Tau-lak, where
trouble could easily have arisen over informalities we
found out in several of the deeds which were sent in.
At last, however, every difficulty was overcome at
the Registration Offices, and all the precious manuscripts
were duly sent for safe keeping beside the packet from
Po-li-sia.
During my stay at that last-named centre, another
subject on which I had many talks with our Church
people and Japanese friends, was that of Education.
And there was no way of evading this because (i) our
own little congregational school there had been closed
owing to children of Christian families having all been
compelled to become pupils in the free Government
Primary Schools ; (2) two young men who formerly were
students in our Theological College at Tainan were now
teachers in those Government Schools, while even Law-
tek, the daughter of our Aw-gu-lan preacher, was teaching
in a Government School which had been opened for the
education of girls those three young persons receiving
very much higher salaries than our Mission had ever paid
to such workers ; (3) one day soon after my arrival in