Through Formosa: An Account of Japan's Island Colony (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Through Formosa: An Account of Japan's Island Colony His book, let me say at once, does not pretend to be a record of thrilling adventures or of hairbreadth escapes; nor does it pretend to be a standard work on Formosa. It is the work of a passer-by, who does not profess to have an intimate and exhaustive knowledge of the country such as can be attained only after many years' residence; it is an account of a journey through a beautiful and fascinating, but little-known, island to which foreigners are not usually encouraged to go, an introduction to its romantic history, to its rich natural resources, and to the unhappy story of the fortunes of the brown people who dwell upon its jungle hills. Thanks to the courtesy of the Government of Formosa I was privileged, during my visit to the island, to look through many windows which ordin arily would have been closed to the traveller, and by the light of my knowledge of other Eastern colonies I have tried to show how in thirty years the Japanese have succeeded, m'arvellously succeeded, in develop ing economically what was, when they first took possession of it, little more than a wilderness; and to show too how they have failed, for all their good intentions, in their attempt to settle and administer the native tribes, made intractable by centuries of tyranny and oppression. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.