To one who has never been in the Orient, it may seem a matter of course that courtship should precede marriage. This, however, is very far from being the case in most Oriental countries, as all know who have been “east of Suez.” Certainly both in China and Japan, marriages are arranged entirely by the parents of the young people, often with the aid of a professional “go-between,” the bride and bridegroom-to-be sometimes not even knowing each other. The idea that a young woman should express any preference on her own part as to the choice of a husband would be considered most indelicate. This, then, makes it the more surprising that a people not only geographically so near to China and Japan, but one that is evidently so closely akin racially to the Japanese--a fact that is now recognized by practically all scientific Japanese ethnologists--should observe customs of courtship which resemble those prevailing in the Western world, rather than those characteristic of the Orient. Nor is this true of one or two tribes only. It is true of all the tribes of the _Chin-huan_ (“green savages”), and even also of those sections of the Ami, Piyuma, and Paiwan tribes that live directly on the east coast, and that have, through contact with the Chinese, become in other respects partly Sinicized. Their own customs of courtship and marriage, however, have remained up to this time intact. “When a young man’s fancy”--not lightly, but seriously, always, in the case of the aborigine--“turns to thoughts of love,” he begins to pay court to the maiden of his choice by going each evening about sunset to her home. Instead, however, of calling, Occidental fashion, upon the young lady or upon her parents, he contents himself with--not exactly sitting upon her doorstep, since she, in the first place, has no doorstep, and since he, in the second place, being a Malay, never sits, as we of the West think of that attitude; but, rather, with squatting in front of the door-way of her hut and beginning to play upon a bamboo musical instrument which somewhat resembles a jews’-harp, and which is played in much the same way. The sound produced is, to the Western ear, more like a wail or lament than like a love-song. However, in Formosa it is--as far as the aborigines are concerned--the practically universal method of serenading one’s lady-love, and is apparently enjoyed both by the serenading warrior and by the young lady. The lover often keeps up the performance for hours at a time, and returns the next evening, and for many succeeding evenings, to repeat it. All this time he makes no attempt to pay any other form of address to the young lady, or to ingratiate himself with her parents. Finally, after some weeks of this nightly serenading, he leaves the bamboo jews’-harp one evening at the lady’s door. When he returns next evening if he finds it still lying there, he knows that his suit has been rejected; and as in Formosa a woman’s “No” apparently _means_ “No,” the swain makes no