Those Clever Aborigines of Formosa....

Popular Science, Aug, 1885, relates this anecdote:

Concerning the manners and customs of the savages of Mount Sylvia, Formosa, Mr. E. Colborne Baber related in the Royal Geographical Society: "A party of English officers from a man-of-war landed on the island, and, meeting a company of natives armed with matchlocks, challenged them to a trial of skill in shooting. Affixing a mark to a tree about a hundred yards distant, the officers made what they considered pretty fair practice, without, however, astonishing the natives, who, when it came their turn to fire, disappeared into the jungle like one man, and crawled onto their bellies through the undergrowth to about three yards from the target, which, of course, they all hit exactly in the center. When the Englishmen protested that such a method of conducting the competition was hardly fair, the natives replied 'We do not understand what you mean by fair, but, anyhow, that is the way we shoot Chinamen.'"

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