In 1895 the island was ceded to Japan by the treaty of Shimonoseki at the close of the Japanese war. The resident Chinese officials, however, refused to recognize the cession, declared a republic, and prepared to offer resistance. It is even said they offered to transfer the sovereignty to Great Britain if that power would accept it. A formal transfer to Japan was made in June of the same year in pursuance of the treaty, the ceremony taking place on board ship outside Kelung, as the Chinese commissioners did not venture to land. The Japanese were thus left to take possession as best they could, and some four months elapsed before they effected a landing on the south of the island. Takau was bombarded and captured on the 15th of October, and the resistance collapsed. Liu Yung-fu, the notorious Black Flag general, and the back-bone of the resistance, sought refuge in flight. The general state of the island when the Japanese assumed possession was that the plain of Giran on the eastern coast and the hill-districts were inhabited by semi-barbarous folk, the western plains by Chinese of a degraded type, and that between the two there existed a traditional and continuous feud, leading to mutual displays of merciless and murderous violence. By many of these Chinese settlers the Japanese conquerors, when they came to occupy the island, were regarded in precisely the same light as the Chinese themselves had been regarded from time immemorial by the aborigines. Insurrections occurred frequently, the insurgents receiving secret aid from sympathizers in China, and the difficulties of the Japanese being increased not only by their ignorance of the country, which abounds in fastnesses where bandits can find almost inaccessible refuge, but also by the unwillingness of experienced officials to abandon their home posts for the purpose of taking service in the new territory. BIBLIOGRAPHY.--C. Imbault-Huart, _L'Ile Formose, histoire et description_ (Paris, 1893), 4^o; J.D. Clark, _Formosa_ (Shanghai, 1896); W.A. Pickering, _Pioneering in Formosa_ (London, 1898); George Candidius, _A Short Account of the Island of Formosa in the Indies_ ..., vol. i.; Churchill's _Collection of Voyages_ (1744); Robert Swinhoe, _Notes on the Island of Formosa_, read before the British Association (1863); W. Campbell, "Aboriginal Savages of Formosa," _Ocean Highways_ (April 1873); H.J. Klaproth, _Description de l'ile de Formose, mem. rel. a l'Asie_ (1826); Mrs T.F. Hughes, _Notes of a Six Years' Residence in Formosa_ (London, 1881); Y. Takekoshi, _Japanese Rule in Formosa_ (transl. by G. Braithwaite) (London, 1907).