The Cruise of the Marchesa to Kamschatka Author:Francis Henry Hill Guillemard Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: I.] SAMASANA. now be considered tolerably safe, but for any one in search of adventure, the east coast still remains open. It is more than doubtful, howev... more »er, whether the results of the explorer's experiences would ever be given to the world. We ran in towards the land to reconnoitre the fort to which I have just alluded, and made out the Chinese flag which was hoisted above it. We had, however, no intention of landing, and on rounding the Xan-sha Cape altered course for the little island of Samasana. Aided by the Kurosiwo or Japanese current, which sweeps up the eastern side of Formosa at the rate of from thirty to forty miles a day, we passed the coast rapidly, and finally dropped anchor about noon in a bay on the north-west side of the island. Samasana was visited by Sir Edward Belcher in the Samarang in 1845, and again by H. M. S. Sylvia in 1867, but we could not discover that any other vessel had been there subsequently. It is a small island, hardly two miles in length, chiefly composed of coralline limestone, which at the western point forms curiously- shaped pinnacles of rock, pierced in places with high arches. We were soon in communication with the natives, who are partly the descendants of Chinese from the Amoy province, intermixed, to . judge from the darkness of their skin and other characteristics, with Formosan aborigines, or possibly with natives of the Meiaco- sima, or Liu-kiu islands. They had brought off some vegetables in their clumsy-looking sampans, which they bartered for tobacco and handkerchiefs, and made signs to us that, if necessary, more could be obtained. "We rowed ashore through a curious little channel cut in the coral reef to enable boats to be launched at all states of the tide, and found that the whole village had turned out en masse t...« less