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It is said that when smallpox is raging the savages of Formosa will drive the demon of disease into a sow, then cut off the animal's ears and burn them or it, believing that in this way they rid themselves of the plague. Amongst the Malagasy the vehicle for carrying away evils is called a faditra.
Along the whole coast, from the river of Formosa or Benin to that of Old Calabar, about 300 miles in length, there open into the Atlantic its successive estuaries, which navigators have scarcely been able to number.
"There ain't anything to tell," said he nonchalantly, but pleased, I could see, at putting Tom Jerrold into the shade for the moment; "only, that they beat 'em off as they were trying to board father's ship off Swatow, when a vessel of war, that was just then coming down from Formosa, caught the beggars in the very act of piracy, before they could run ashore and escape up the hills as they always do, my dad said, whenever our blue-jackets are after them."
Off the east of Formosa, and during the middle watch, the ships of the squadron were caught aback in a sudden squall. There was a deuce of a commotion up aloft, sails flapping and splitting, ropes cracking, and blocks rattling till further orders. To establish order amongst these refractory things the hands were called.
And in it, cholera goes on. They say a typhoon is coming. Word has come from Formosa that a typhoon is rushing up from the southern seas, from Hong Kong, the Equator, wherever it is they come from. It will reach us to-night. That will be better. The heat will go then, blown from the land by the gigantic blast of the typhoon, zig-zagging up the coast from Formosa.
But a man should at least know what he is giving up. You should know what your patrimony consists of. You should know, as the saying is, what you 'stand to lose. Therefore you must go to Sampaolo, and see it with your own eyes. Isola Nobile, Castel San Guido, the Palazzo Rosso, Villa Formosa you must see them all, with their gardens and their pictures and their treasures.
But the deaths resulting from other causes, up to as late a date as the 8th of June, during the occupation of Formosa, were 3,148. Of these, 1,602 were due to cholera alone. Such, at least, were the official figures as published in the Kobe Chronicle.
In fact, a few minutes' consideration sufficed to convince him that this must indeed be Formosa, since there was no other island of such extent as this, anywhere in the vicinity, upon which the cruiser could possibly have struck.
We would have gone into the bay of Tonquin, for we wanted to inform ourselves of what was to be known concerning the Dutch ships that had been there; but we durst not stand in there, because we had seen several ships go in, as we supposed, but a little before; so we kept on NE. towards the island of Formosa, as much afraid of being seen by a Dutch or English merchant ship as a Dutch or English merchant ship in the Mediterranean is of an Algerine man-of-war.
On the afternoon of the third day after leaving Formosa the steamer ploughed her way up the muddy waters of the river, and came to an anchor off the city at a place which was within half a mile of the Viceroy's residence. The mandarin requested the captain to fire three guns, and hoist the Chinese flag at both the fore and main peaks.
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