From Far Formosa: The Island, its People and Missions Cambridge Library Collection - Travel and Exploration in Asia Paperback 1108037720 9781108037723 George Leslie Mackay

• Format: Paperback
• Author: George Leslie Mackay
• ISBN10: 1108037720
• ISBN13: 9781108037723

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.