Note 2 — Letter from Fernando de Silva to Felipe IV

Interesting accounts of Formosa and its inhabitants are given by George Candidius (a Dutch Protestant minister who began a mission among the natives in 1626), in Churchill’s collection of Voyages (London, 1704), i, pp. 526–533; and J.B. Steere, who traveled through the western part of the island, in Journal of American Geographical Society, 1874, pp. 303–334. The latter states that the chief city of Formosa, Taiwanfu, is built on the site of the old Dutch colony near Fort Zelandia; and furnishes several vocabularies of native languages.