Seqalu: Formosa 1867 | Kenting Forest Park — Where the Landing Party Lost

In June 1867 an American naval landing party came ashore below the southern cape to punish the people who had killed the crew of the wrecked barque Rover. They marched into forest and the forest beat them. Their commander, Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, was shot dead, and the expedition withdrew having achieved nothing at all. Seqalu films that reversal here, in the Kenting forest park, and the choice is doing more work than a location scout usually gets credit for. This is uplifted coral reef — half a million years ago it was a living seabed of coral, calcareous algae and shellfish, and tectonic movement pushed it into the air. What grows on it now is limestone forest: banyan roots poured over rock like wax, fissures you walk down single file, caves with stalactites, ground that gives you no clear sight line in any direction. That is exactly why a disciplined nineteenth-century military formation loses to people who live there. The terrain cancels the advantage. Rifles and drill need distance and visibility, and this forest supplies neither. The same paths carry the scenes of Butterfly walking alone under the vegetation, and the effect flips — hemmed in, then held. You can walk it in two to three hours. There is a ticket office, a signed loop, macaques close enough to be a nuisance, butterflies in numbers, and a viewing tower at the top. Bring water and expect heat. Open daily from eight. Go down into one of the fissures where the rock closes overhead and stop. You cannot see forty metres in any direction. That is the whole military history of this coast in one sensation, and no dialogue in the series explains it better. Cover photo: 阿道, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.