were much tickled. The great Emperor of Japan had done them proud, they thought, in sending over so many victims to be sacrificed to the native god. Owing to the veneration which sacrificial animals inspired in their bosoms, they did not dare to inspect the norimmonnos too closely, but stood by in rapt admiration while the backs of the elephants were laden with their sacred burdens. A magnificent retinue of Japanese officers accompanied them to the capital city of Xternetsa.

Just as the ceremonies were about to begin, and the King of Formosa, his courtiers and his citizens, were looking on in open-mouthed admiration, the signal agreed upon was given. Out poured ten thousand Japanese soldiers. The Formosans were taken by surprise, the king surrendered on the spot, and Merryaandanoo neatly and expeditiously possessed himself of the capital, and later of the entire island, without shedding a drop of blood!

Since that time the King of Japan has always held a strong garrison in the island, and sends over a king to govern it. This king is known as the Tano Agon, or Superintendent; the real heirs to the throne bear the title of Bagalandro, or Viceroy, and have little more than the empty title, a yearly stipend, and the right to wear robes of a very magnificent description.

The religion of the country is polytheism. One of its chief rites is the yearly sacrifice of eighteen thousand boys' hearts. Note the figures. We shall have to recur to them again. Every month they sacrifice one thousand beasts, and every week as many fowls as they are able.

The religious ceremonies of the Formosans are curious.

"1. The Formosans, in adoring God, use various postures of body, according to the several parts of religious worship they are performing; for, first, when the Farhabadiond is publicly read in their temples, every one of them, at least if he be capable of doing it, bends a little the right knee, and lifts up the right hand towards heaven.

"2. When thanks are given to God, then all of them fall prostrate on the ground.

"3. After the thanksgiving, when they sing songs or hymns, they are to stand up with their hands joined together.

"4. When prayers are made for the sanctification of the sacrifices, then every one bends the left knee and stretches out his arms wide open. But when the victims are a-slaying, every one may sit upon the ground (for they have no seats or pews such as you use here in England), only the richer sort have a cushion to sit on; while the flesh is a-boiling every one stands with his hands joined together, looking towards the upper part of the tabernacle. After the flesh is boiled, every one of the people takes a piece of the flesh from the priest and eats it, and what remains the priests keep for themselves." Religious freedom, however, is assured to all save Christians: "No king can prohibit or enjoin any religion in his country; but every subject shall enjoy the liberty of his conscience to worship God after his own way, except there shall be any found that are Christians."

Transmigration is one of the doctrines taught by the clergy. The soul of a woman, it appears, cannot obtain eternal rest until it has informed the body of a man; though "some, indeed, think that if it animate the body of a male beast, it is sufficient to attain as great happiness as it is capable of."

Another article of the Formosan faith seems to the excellent Mr. Psal

manazar the converted Formosan a deplorable one. And this is the worship which even the sanest and most pious citizens give to the demon.

They hold, indeed, that there are no devils save aerial spirits who people the atmosphere around us. These they imagine to be the souls of the wicked, and they offer sacrifices to them, thinking thus to propitiate them. They acknowledge that these spirits are the enemies of God and man, but they are

firmly persuaded that all public and private calamities, as storms, earthquakes, famines, pestilences, sicknesses, and so on, are caused by these spirits. Wherefore whenever any affliction seizes them they rush to certain mountains where there are altars raised to the demon or chief of the evil spirits, and prostrate themselves before the hideous statues that surmount the altars, and beat their breasts, and pray, and sacrifice animals of all kinds, and even children, believing that the blood of these innocents will appease the anger of the demon.

The funerals of people of wealth and distinction are conducted with great pomp. The body of the deceased is rubbed with perfumes and laid out on a table for thirty-two hours. Parents and friends assemble around it. Food and drink are served to them, of which they partake in silence.

The funeral cortége is marshalled in this order. First of all walks a city magnate bearing the arms of the deceased; then a lot of musicians singing and playing slow and subdued airs; then the military, armed with lances, bows, cross-bows, and swords; then the monks, preceded by an officer of the convent bearing the emblem of the order and followed by their Soulleto, or superior. The secular priests follow, and in their wake comes the wagon carrying the animals which are to be sacrificed. This wagon is drawn by an elephant. The weepers are next. They march immediately before the body, which is carried in a sort of litter covered with black and surmounted in the middle by a small tower. This litter (which is called norimmonnos ach boskos) is borne on the backs of two elephants covered with black cloth in such a way that nothing can be seen save the head of the first one. On this cloth are worked the armorial devices of the deceased and of his ancestors. Last of all come the relatives and friends of the dead.

When the procession has arrived at the sacrificial altar, priests and monks pray for the sanctification of the animals, they are duly slaughtered and burnt, and then the body itself is cremated with appropriate ceremonies.

Those who hold that the Formosans are olive-skinned are greatly in error. The upper classes, especially, are as fair as Europeans, owing to their habit of living during the hot season in caves or in tents kept cool by the continual sprinkling of water. Nor are the Formosans gigantic in size, as some authors assert. They are rather below than above the middle size, and the ladies especially are very beautiful, so much so that some hold the Formosan and the Turkish women to be the fairest in the world. In a foot-note the author adds with becoming gallantry that even were the Georgians willing to cede them the palm in this respect, it might well be contested by the ladies of England. Their dress, from the descriptions, does not differ very materially from the European in fashion, though its materials are sometimes leopard-, tiger-, and bear-skins, which would seem strangely unsuited to a tropical country.

The national architecture, too, appears to be more European in character than one would have expected, and might be described as a judicious admixture of the Chinese and the classical.

The Formosans have no carriages; their monnos, which we have already described. nificence.

principal vehicles are the norimThese vary in size and in mag

The norimmonnos of the viceroy is from eight to nine feet in height by twelve in breadth. It is upholstered inside with silk and cloth-of-gold, and is covered on the outside with pure gold. Two elephants, richly caparisoned, are the bearers. The viceroy takes his seat within, accompanied by his Carilhan, or general, together with some ten or twelve of their wives, whenever he goes to Japan to pay formal homage to the emperor.

The norimmonnos of the nobility and gentry are not more than seven feet high and ten wide. They are of wood, painted and gilded.

The king does not possess a norimmonnos, as he is not required to travel to Japan for the purpose of homage. He rides his horse on land, and varies this out-door existence by going down to the sea in a balcon or balon, a sort of barge or galley, with a tower in the middle. Other dignitaries also have their balcons, but these are smaller and less gorgeous.

Some of the more outlandish habits and customs of the Formosans must be mentioned here.

Polygamy is practised by those who can afford it. But if the first wife, or an only wife, bears her husband no children, he may kill her and install an other in her place. The oldest son of the first wife is the heir to one-half the husband's fortune, and in case the first wife has no child, that portion of the estate is forfeited to the crown. Hence the king keeps a watchful and a thrifty eye over all marriages.

Terrible penalties prevent the practice of polygamy by those who cannot afford it. "If any one takes more wives than his means will maintain, he is to be beheaded." Each wife lives in a separate chamber, but all of them take their meals together. "No conversation is allowed between any man and another man's wife, nor between a bachelor and a maid, but in the greatest feasts and diversions every one keeps among those of his own family."

Cannibalism is not habitual, but the inhabitants eat the bodies of prisoners of war and of malefactors legally executed. "The flesh of the latter is our greatest dainty, and is four times dearer than other rare and delicious food." Husbands, also, who have reason to be offended with their wives condemn them to the family larder. In aggravated cases the husband may send for the lady's relatives, and "sometimes with fiery indignation he strikes her in the breast with a dagger, and sometimes, to show his resentment, he will take her heart out hastily and eat it before her relations."

The Formosans are also accustomed to beat live serpents with rods "until they be very angry, and when they are in this furious passion all the venom that was in the body ascends to the head, which being then cut off, there remains no more poison in the body, which may therefore be safely eaten." Elsewhere the author commends this, taken in the early morning with a pipe of tobacco and a cup of tea, as, "in my humble opinion, the most wholesome breakfast a man can make."

The laws, as a rule, seem to be much like those which prevail in European countries, save that the punishments are more vindictive and sanguinary. A murderer is to be "hanged up by the feet with his head downward" for a longer or shorter time, and is then "shot to death with arrows.' "If he be both a robber and a murderer, he shall be crucified." A thief is punished with hanging or with continual imprisonment, or with whipping, or with a fine. An adulterer is fined or whipped for the first offence, and beheaded for the second. A blasphemer is burnt alive. A slanderer has his tongue bored through with a hot iron, and one who bears false witness loses that member altogether. A traitor is "tortured with all imaginable torments."

A son or daughter who strikes his or her parents, relations, or superiors, shall have his or her legs and arms cut off, and, a stone being fastened to the maimed and helpless trunk, it is cast into the sea or river.

Evidently any child who wishes its days to be long and pleasant in that land must honor father and mother and uncle and aunt.

In his chapter on the Formosan language the author dwells at much length upon its alphabet and grammatical structure, and adds specimens of the written character, which are to be read from right to left,-plausible enough to mystify even men of culture, acquainted only with the classical languages of Europe, and ignorant of the rudiments of comparative philology.

The book was a success.

The first edition was rapidly sold, and a second

was called for. But though the learned world was staggered, and a large proportion convinced, the book was too full of absurdities, the author too young and ignorant, to gain universal credence.

Evidence is given in the second edition that there had grown up a formidable crop of objections against the narrative. He treated them, however, with a debonair air that shows him to have been an agile master of logical fence. For example, when it was urged that the annual sacrifice of eighteen thousand male infants would soon depopulate the island, he explained that he referred to the number legally demanded by the priesthood. Bribery, prompted by parental affection, undoubtedly diminished that number very greatly. Again, when asked how he could remember the very words of Merryaandanoo's letter, he replied, "My father has a copy of the letter by him." But his cavillers were not to be silenced. To use a current but excellent phrase, he was continually "giving himself away" by contradictions and misstatements made in the heat of personal altercation with his disputants. Slowly and reluctantly the public mind was brought to acquiesce in the view that he was an impostor. He fell from favor, and almost disappeared from public view. His biographer states that he consorted with the very lowest ranks of society and crawled in the vilest pursuits.

But we are not yet at the end of the surprises reserved for us by Psalma

nazar.

In 1716, at the age of thirty-two, he experienced a genuine and lasting change of heart. The squalid adventurer became the model of modest virtue, the audacious forger the pattern of conscientious scholarship.

No penitent could have done more honor to religion. He disavowed his early impostures, took occasion to introduce into a treatise upon geography a rectification on the subject of his former description of Formosa, and finally wrote a detailed confession designed for publication after his death.

upon a

He lived to be seventy-nine years old, busying himself for half a century "Universal History" and other meritorious but now forgotten works. Dr. Johnson knew him in those days, and more than once bore testimony to the uprightness and sincerity of the former adventurer. "He was," Johnson told Boswell, one of the men for whom he entertained the greatest respect." In 1764, a year after his death, his memoirs were published, containing a full confession of what the writer calls "the base and shameful imposture of passing upon the world for a native of Formosa and a convert to Christianity, and backing it with a fictitious account of that island, and of my own travels, conversion, etc., all or most of it hatched in my own brain without regard to truth or honesty."

Still he does not reveal his real name. He begs to be excused from naming his country or family, "or anything that might cast a reflection upon either," but assures the reader "that out of Europe I was not born, nor educated, nor ever travelled." It has been plausibly conjectured, however, from various admissions made here and there in the memoirs, that he was a native of the southern part of France.

His parents, he tells us, were extremely poor. His father came of an ancient but decayed family, but through stress of circumstances had been obliged to leave his mother when the boy was only five years old and live a long distance away. So his care and education were left entirely to the mother. She was a zealous Catholic, cherishing a natural hatred for Protestants and Protestantism, but withal an excellent and well-meaning woman. Poor as she was, she stinted herself of everything but the necessaries of life in order to give the boy an education.

When six years old he was sent to a free school taught by two Franciscan monks. Here his uncommon talent for languages was early recognized. He

was transferred to the Latin form, where, although his classmates were twice his years, he outstripped them all in a comparatively brief space of time, carrying off the highest prizes, and being "singled out as the flower of the flock" whenever priests, monks, gentlemen, or other persons passed through the city. All this made him assuming and arrogant. Nevertheless, he was never guilty of a fault at school: "so, let me do what I would out of it, I was never punished for it as the other boys were, but had, perhaps, a soft reprimand or some easy task assigned me by way of penance."

The good boy of the school, who won all the prizes and escaped all the reprimands, was naturally no favorite with his school-fellows. But he held his head high, and they dared not vent their displeasure in any other way than in words.

At nine years of age he was removed to a Jesuit college. Here at first he found it hard work to keep up with his class, and he who had been used to be foremost found it a shame now to be middlemost. So he worked hard, and acquitted himself with much credit. Subsequently he studied theology. Then he left school and tried teaching. But in this he was not a success. He was naturally indolent. When he found that his pupil was not only indolent, but stupid, he gave up trying to teach him, and master and pupil "spent more of our time in playing on the violin and flute than at our books."

His next situation was with two small boys, whose mother proved somewhat too demonstrative to him. But he remained cold to all her advances, owing not so much to virtue, he acknowledges, as to "my natural sheepish bashfulness and inexperienced youth." So she procured his dismissal.

He was now in sore straits. He took the road to Avignon, and made his first essay as an impostor. He claimed to be a sufferer for religion,―his love for the Church had estranged his father and cut off his financial supplies. He was praised and pitied. But he wanted hard cash, and that was not forthcoming. So he tried another plan. He procured a certificate to the effect that he was a young student of theology of Irish extract," then going on a pilgrimage to Rome.

But how to obtain a pilgrim's garb?

He remembered that a returned pilgrim had left his cloak and staff in a neighboring church as a token of gratitude for his happy return. The church was never empty. But fearless audacity is always successful. Psalmanazar simply walked boldly in at noon-time and carried off both cloak and staff. He had an answer ready prepared in case he was stopped and questioned. He would have said that he imagined the things were placed there for the accommodation of penniless pilgrims.

"How far such a poor excuse would have gone I knew not, neither did I trouble my head about it; however, I escaped without such an inquiry, and carried it off unmolested, and made what haste I could to some private corner, where I threw my cloak over my shoulders, and walked with a sanctified grace with the staff in my hand, till I was out of the city."

So accoutred, and with the proper certificate in his hand, he begged his way in fluent Latin, "accosting only clergymen or persons of figure, by whom I could be understood and was most likely to be relieved."

He was very successful,-so successful, indeed, that but for his vanity and his extravagance he might easily have saved a good deal of money. But as soon as he had sufficient for the day he would quit begging and retire to some inn, where he spent money as freely as he got it, "not without some such awkward tokens of generosity as better suited with my vanity than my present circumstances.' ""

Should he go home, or pursue his journey to the Eternal City? He deliberated the question for a while. Filial piety finally carried the day.

His