Ami Wheeled Vehicle Resembling Models found in Early Cyprian Tombs—Boat-building and the Art of Navigation on the Decline.

This subject might be dismissed with a word—so little is any method of transport less primitive than that of human shoulders developed among the aboriginal tribes—were it not for two facts which raise interesting questions. One of these has to do with land transport; the other with transport by water.

Regarding the former, the only tribe that uses any sort of wheeled vehicle, or that knows anything of a beast of draught, is the Ami. The vehicle of this tribe is a primitive two-wheeled cart, the interesting point about it being that the solid wheels are fixed to the axle, the latter revolving with each revolution of the wheels. In fact, the construction of the cart causes it to resemble an enormous harrow rather than any vehicle usually associated with transport. The Ami tribes-people, however, are inordinately proud of this invention, which they say was introduced among them by the “White Fathers” (evidently the Dutch) of the “glorious long ago.” This cart is[194] drawn by a “water-buffalo,” a descendant of those said to have been brought to Formosa by the Dutch.[98]

The question of interest in connection with this vehicle is whether or not the Dutch of the seventeenth century used carts of so primitive a type as that now in use among the Ami. Is it not more probable that when the carts introduced by the Dutch fell into decay, the Ami, in their attempts at imitation of the original model, unconsciously reproduced a form of vehicle used by man at the “dawn of history?”[99]

Needless to say, the Ami cart produces a painful creaking, and a sound that can be compared only to a series of groans when it is drawn over the rough roads of the east coast. This, however, apparently adds to its attractiveness in the eyes of its owners.

Whether or not the present-day cart represents the degeneration of a more highly evolved type of vehicle once known to the Ami would be difficult to assert with positiveness. As regards water[195] transport, however, it is almost certain that degeneration has taken place among the Ami, as among the other Formosan tribes, both in the craft of boat-building and in the understanding of navigation. Tribal traditions among all the aborigines point to the fact that their ancestors were skilful navigators and that they understood the construction of boats capable of making long voyages. But the rafts used for fishing at the present time by those tribes living on the east coast could not be used for making ............