Thus according to tradition was created the island of Formosa, or Taiwan, which is in area about half the size of Scotland, but is in shape long and narrow, being about 265 miles long[13] and--at its widest point--about 80 miles wide. It is separated from China by the Formosa Channel, sometimes called Fokien Strait, which is at the widest about 245 miles, but at the narrowest only 62 miles; the dragon seeming to prefer to build this memorial of himself almost within sight of his permanent abiding-place. Indeed the Chinese-Formosan fishermen declare that on a clear day the coast-line of China may be discerned from the west coast of Formosa. But this I, myself, have never seen--the curve of the earth, alone, would, I think, prevent its being actually seen--and I am inclined to think that the fishermen mistake the outline of the Pescadores, small islands lying between China and Formosa, but nearer the latter, for China proper. That is, if their imagination does not play them false altogether, and build for them out of the clouds on the horizon a semblance of the coast-line of the home of their ancestors--something sacred to every Chinese, whatever the conditions of starvation or servitude which drove his ancestors from the motherland. Something of the early historical, or pseudo-historical, records of Formosa my Chinese-Formosan fellow-voyager on the Osaka Shosen Kaisha steamer also told me. It seems that the first mention in Chinese records of the island is in the _Sui-Shu_--the history of the Sui Dynasty, which lasted from A.D. 581 to 618, according to Occidental reckoning. At that time Chinese historians and also geographers believed Formosa to be one of the Lu-chu ([Illustration]) group; that long chain of tiny islands which dot the sea from the south of Japan to the north of Formosa, like stepping-stones, or--as they more strongly reminded me when I first saw them--like the stones which Hop-o’-my-Thumb dropped from his pocket when he and his brothers were carried away into the forest, that they might find their way back home.