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Formosa Push Car, Formosa, 1950

"'Many people get killed on this railroad?' 'Not so many,' Said the pushers. Such questions elicited fatalistic replies. On the 14-mile [22.5 kilometer] round trip to Chiaopanshan, this car bearing the [article's] author and his companions jumped the track dozens of times, but never on one of these crude log bridges across mountain ravines. Push cars are used only in remote areas; Formosa's populous west and north are served by good steam railroad lines; the east coast line is less dependable."

—From "Poor Little Rich Land—Formosa," February 1950, National Geographic magazine

Photograph by J. Baylor Roberts