According to early Chinese historians the aboriginal inhabitants of Formosa up to about the sixth century A.D. were a gentle and peaceable people, making no objection to Chinese settlements on the coast of the island. Then in about the second half of the sixth century--as nearly as Oriental and Occidental systems of reckoning time can be correlated (the beginning of the Sui dynasty) there swept up from “somewhere in the south” bands of fierce marauders who conquered the west coast of the island and drove the surviving aboriginal inhabitants into the central mountains. A little later--in about the seventh century--the Chinese historian, Ma Tuan-hiu, says a Chinese expedition went to Formosa, with the intention of forcing the new inhabitants to pay tribute to China. This, however, these “new inhabitants”--of Malay origin presumably--refused to do. Consequently great numbers were killed by the Chinese, who also burned many native villages, and used the blood of the slain inhabitants for caulking their boats. To one who knows the peculiar reverence with which blood is regarded by all primitive peoples, and the many ceremonies, religious and social, in which the use of blood makes the ceremony sacred, it is easily comprehensible that the caulking of Chinese boats with the blood of their kinsmen caused greater consternation among the Formosan savages than the mere slaughter of a greater number of their people would have done. In spite, however, of the ruthless measures taken by the Chinese in their efforts to extort tribute, the “wild men of the South” held their ground, and the Chinese were at last obliged to leave the island without tribute, and without having exacted the promise of it. This, according to Chinese records, was an unprecedented occurrence when sons of the Flowery Kingdom were dealing with barbarians.