Glimpses of Japan and Formosa

Several trains run day and night the whole length of Formosa, covering the 257 miles between the northern and the southern port in ten or twelve hours. Besides, there are branch-lines, and growing extensions above Keelung and below Takao in the south, while over on the precipitous east side of the island work is progressing on the system that before many years will encircle it entirely. But the railway confines itself everywhere to the edges of the island, like Japanese control and orderliness, and nowhere penetrates very far into the magnificent mountainous interior that makes up three fourths of the area and nearly all the beauty of Formosa.

Against the almost anarchistic background of travel, even by rail, in the China of to-day, these real Japanese trains were like a return to the modern world again. One could overlook the meter-gauge, as of Japan proper, and the screechy, ear-torturing whistles of the locomotives copied from Europe; for the trains take the time-table seriously; ticket-collectors uncover and bow at the door even of third class-the patronage of which is quite possible to the traveler without "face" to lose and the habit of stretching his money over the greatest possible distances; the constant watering and sweeping of the car-floors is an enormous gain over China, where none but a few special first-class coaches can vie in cleanliness with the cheapest class here, though the mass of Formosans has not yet by any means reached the Japanese stage of pulchritude. On the other hand it is not they who strip to scanty underwear in the first- and second-class coaches.