The Black-bearded Barbarian

Marian Keith (1874 - 1961) wrote about George Leslie Mackay who was known as the Black Bearded Barbarian by those who knew him in China. Mackay was the first Presbyterian missionary to serve in Formosa. He is well known in Taiwan for his work in the last part of the 19th century. Mackay arrived in Formosa in 1872. He began with an itinerant dentistry practice. He later established churches, schools and a hospital practicing Western biomedicine. Mackay spoke the Taiwanese language fluently and married a Taiwanese woman. In June 1894, at the General Assembly meeting in St. John, New Brunswick, Mackay was elected Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, the highest elected position in the church. He spent the following Moderatoral year traveling across Canada, as well as writing From Far Formosa: the island, its people and missions, a missionary ethnography and memoir of his missionary experiences.