Glimpses of Japan and Formosa

There can be no dispute as to the justice of having named the chief stepping-stone between Japan and the Philippines "Ilha Formosa. " Even from the sea it is a beautiful island; no visitors, except those foolish enough to content themselves with a journey along its tame, railway-linked western flatlands, will be likely to forget in one brief lifetime its magnificent interior. Once it has decided, not far inland, to take to the clouds, Formosa rises very abruptly from the western foot-hills, range after range of blue mountains, their tops most often covered with clouds, the highest of them topped with snow in midwinter, vying with one another in their excited upward climb until they culminate in Niitakayama, known to the outside world as Mount Morrison. This giant of the Japanese Empire rears its head, though rarely showing it to the world below, more than thirteen thousand feet above the sea, on which it can look down in almost any direction. Many of its neighbors have an elevation of more than ten thousand feet. Then, as if their ambition for climbing had suddenly subsided, the ranges drop precipitously down to where the blue waters of the Pacific lap the solitary crags beneath. The cliffs on the east coast of Formosa are reputed to be the most headlong in the world, towering in places a sheer six thousand feet from the water's edge.

One extremely narrow valley, between this great central mass of mountains and the smaller eastern coast range, stretches half the length of the island, in its central portion, and along this the Japanese are already completing a section of the government railways. This passes a few plantations and links together some unimportant towns, but runs mainly through semi-savage territory. The wild region to the north of it presents a serious problem to the engineers charged with completely surrounding Taiwan by rail. There are two trails by which the island can be crossed, one at the southern end, and another, unsafe without a large escort, nearly through the middle of it. Several hundred miles of push-car tracks thrust their way inland in perhaps half a dozen places, but none of them penetrate very deeply into the precipitous and savage interior, doubly romantic because it is forbidden territory.