The Pepohoans used to live in fertile plains, but when greedy and grasping Chinese drove them from the rich and beautiful lands that were then theirs, and had belonged to their ancestors before them, they took shelter, and made themselves homes, in mountain fastnesses.
Sybil and Leonard were charmed with the people of Poahbi, and thought both their faces and manners very pretty. Although some of the people stared at the foreigners, and laughed at them, many wished to make them welcome in their midst. One woman gave them shelter for the night—a very kind-hearted woman, with a dear little baby, and a very clean and comfortable home. She was a Christian.
At Poahbi Mr. Graham saw a little Christian chapel, which the natives had not only built, but which they also kept up, themselves. Pepohoans are good builders, and do also much work in the fields. They have a most affectionate remembrance of the Dutch, who were once their masters, but who were afterwards expelled from Formosa by a Chinese pirate.
VIEW OF TAKOW, A TOWN IN FORMOSA.
The huts, or bamboo cottages, of the Pepohoans, raised on terraces three or four feet high, looked very picturesque, and consisted first of a framework of bamboo, through which crossbars of reeds were run; the whole being thickly covered over with clay. The houses were afterwards whitened with lime. A barrier of prickly stems extended round the huts, throwing a shade over them, whilst these dwellings often had for roofing a thatch of dried leaves. Most things in Formosa were made of bamboo, such as tables, chairs, beds, pails, rice-measures, jars, hats, pipes, chop-sticks, goblets, paper, and pens. Many of the Pepohoans' habitations were built on three sides of a four-cornered spot, with a yard in the centre, where the families sometimes passed their evenings together. The natives assembled here, in numbers, at about nine o'clock, where they made a fire when it was cold. Old and young people here often formed a circle on the ground, sitting together with their arms crossed, smoking, and talking. It was not unusual for dogs also to surround them. These people were fond of singing, but played no musical instruments. Sybil said, directly she saw them, that they were just the sort of people she liked, but this was before she heard that they ate serpents and rats. The women had a quantity of hair, which they wound round their heads like crowns. None of them painted their faces. Some of the men were very badly dressed. All Pepohoans seemed to have very beautiful black eyes. In the different villages the inhabitants were different, and where they had most contact with the Chinese they dressed better, but were less affable. They seemed to be a very honest race.
The Pepohoans are subject to the Chinese Government. Some of them, like the Chinese, have been ruined by opium. The aborigines, consisting of different tribes, talk different dialects. The people of one tribe, the most savage of all, are very warlike, and think nothing of killing and eating their Chinese neighbours when they get the chance to do so; therefore, they are held in great terror. Sybil and Leonard would not have liked to have visited this tribe, for they also hate Europeans.
MOUNTAINEERS OF FORMOSA.
There was a grandness of beauty in this island of Formosa which could not fail, more and more, to charm Mrs. Graham, and many a pretty sketch did she here make, both for herself and for Sybil's letters. Sybil also liked being here very much; "but if she had only seen," Leonard said, what he and his father saw one day, when they went for a ramble through the mountains, whilst Sybil was helping her mother to sketch by keeping her company, and making clever little attempts at sketching herself, "she would want to be off that very moment."