From Far Formosa

First published in 1896 and based on extracts from diaries, notes and reports, this work, edited by J. A. Macdonald, tells of the nearly three decades that George Mackay (1844–1901) spent on the island of Formosa (now Taiwan). In 1872 the Canadian Presbyterian priest arrived in northern Taiwan and set up a new missionary station. Within a month of his arrival he had made his first convert, a Chinese named Giam Chheng Hoa. Mackay married a local woman, with whom he had three children, and made numerous trips around the island, founded a hospital and established a college. He also gathered specimens of local fauna and flora that formed the cornerstone of a museum. Mackay offers vivid descriptions of Formosan geography, culture and animal life; his interpretation of the syncretic 'heathenism' of Formosa as a 'dark damning nightmare' is characteristic of the Western viewpoint of his time.