CHAPTER XV.

MACAO.

Contrast with Hongkong -- An interesting survival -- Trading facilities -- Relations with Chinese Government -- Creditable to both parties -- Successful resistance to the Dutch -- Portuguese expulsion from Japan -- English trading competitors enjoy hospitality of Macao -- Trade with Canton -- Hongkong becomes a rival -- Macao eclipsed -- Gambling, Coolie trade, Piracy -- Population -- Cradle of many improvements -- Distinguished names.

The three hours' transit from Hongkong to Macao carries one into another world. The incessant scream of steam-launches which plough the harbour in all directions night and day gives place to the drowsy chime of church bells, and instead of the throng of busy men, one meets a solitary black mantilla walking demurely in the middle of a crooked and silent street. Perhaps nowhere is the modern world with its clamour thrown into such immediate contrast with that which belongs to the past.

The settlement of Macao is a monument of Chinese toleration and of Portuguese tenacity. The Portuguese learnt at an early stage of their intercourse the use of the master-key to good relations with the Chinese authorities. It was to minister freely to their cupidity, which the Portuguese could well afford to do out of the profits of their trading. To "maintain ourselves in this place we must spend much with the Chinese heathen," as they themselves said in 1593 in a letter to Philip I. Macao is, besides, an interesting relic of that heroic age when a new heaven and a new earth became the dream of European adventurers. The spot was excellently well suited for the purposes, commercial and propagandist, which it was destined to serve; for in spite of the crimes and cruelties of the sixteenth century argonauts, the religious element was strongly represented in all their enterprises.[36] Situated outside the river proper, though within its wide estuary, and open to the sea, the settlement yet communicates by an inner passage or branch of the Pearl river with the city of Canton. It possesses two sheltered harbours adequate to the nautical requirements of the Middle Ages.

The small peninsula of Macao combined business conveniences with salubrity of climate in a degree absolutely unrivalled in the torrid zone. Its picturesque scenery was always found refreshing to the eye wearied by long contemplation of brick walls, malarious swamps, or the monotonous glare of the melancholy ocean. From the Chinese point of view, also, it was an ideal location for strangers, since they could be thus kept out of sight, isolated like a ship in quarantine, and put under effective restraint. The situation lent itself to the traditional Chinese tactics of controlling barbarians by stopping their food-supply, a form of discipline of which the efficacy had been proved at an early period in the history of the colony. The Chinese adopted all the measures they could think of to confine traders to Macao, where certain indulgences were held out to them, subject to good behaviour.

The Portuguese adventurers of the early sixteenth century, to whom the modern world owes so much, did well in pitching on this "gem of the orient earth and open sea" as a link in their chain of trading stations, which extended from the coasts of Africa to the Japanese islands. To trade as such the Chinese Government never seem to have had any objection, nor, would it appear, to foreigners as such. So long as there was nought to fear from their presence, the ancient maxim of cherishing men from afar could be followed without reserve, for the Chinese are by nature not an unkindly people. Tradition, indeed, claims for the settlement of foreigners in the Cantonese archipelago a purely hospitable origin, a storm-beaten vessel having in the year 1517 received permission from the local authorities to repair damages and dry her cargo there. The Portuguese frequented several harbours before they settled at Macao, their principal station being the island of Sanchuan, where Xavier was buried. About the middle of the sixteenth century, the city of Canton being besieged by a large piratical force whose base of operations was Macao, the high provincial authorities in their extremity sought the aid of the Portuguese, who came promptly to the rescue of the city, defeated the pirates, and captured their stronghold. Moved by mixed feelings of gratitude and policy, the Canton authorities thereupon sanctioned the Portuguese occupation of Macao, not ill-pleased to set up at that strategic point so effective a counterpoise to the native pirates.

It said as much for the tact of the Portuguese as for the forbearance of the Chinese authorities that such an isolated position as that of Macao should have been held without force, and only on the prestige of past achievements, on terms of mutual amity, for nearly four hundred years. The Portuguese squatters paid to the Chinese Government a ground-rent of about £150 per annum, in consideration of which they enjoyed practical independence. "The merchants, fully aware that their settlement at Macao was due neither to any conquest, nor as a return for services by co-operating in destruction of pirates, bore in mind two principles--to be on good terms with the provincial authorities, and to improve as much as possible their exclusive trade with China." The forms of administrative authority were indeed maintained by the Chinese, their permission being required to reside and to build houses and so forth--regulations which were more vexatious, perhaps, in theory than in fact. The exercise of Chinese jurisdiction over the person was asserted with moderation as regards the Portuguese, though full authority was maintained over the native population. The Portuguese, however, became dissatisfied with the relationship which had worked smoothly for three hundred years, and when the treaty-making era arrived they sought means to improve their status. By persistent efforts they gradually freed themselves from the overlordship of China, this object being finally attained by good diplomacy in 1887, when the Imperial Government ceded to Portugal sovereign rights over Macao in consideration of assistance rendered by the colony in the collection of the Chinese opium revenue.

Macao did not escape the fortunes of the long war of commercial supremacy which was waged between Holland and Portugal, but the colony successfully resisted two attempts to reduce it in 1622 and 1627. Its resources at that period enabled the diminutive settlement even to play some part in the game of empire in China itself, for we are told that a force of 400 men from India, under the command of two Portuguese officers, proceeded by land to Peking to support the last Ming emperor in his struggle with the invading Manchus. These auxiliaries returned whence they came without seeing active service.

Although the Dutch failed to take military possession of Macao, they took other trading colonies, and succeeded eventually in wresting from the Portuguese their Asiatic commerce. They supplanted them entirely in Japan, whose "gold and spoils" had greatly enriched the colony. Being expelled, not without reason, in 1662, the Portuguese fugitives from Japan retired to Macao.

Other competitors also began to appear and to assert their right to participate in the trade of the Far East, and Macao became the hostelry for merchants of all nations, who carried on business with the great Chinese emporium, Canton. Chief among these guests were the Dutch and English East India Companies, both of which maintained establishments at Macao for some two hundred years.

The English Company had made use of the Macao anchorage first under a treaty with the viceroy of Goa, and subsequently under Cromwell's treaty with the Portuguese Government in 1654, which permitted English ships to enter all the ports in the Portuguese Indies. Before the close of the seventeenth century ships were despatched direct from England to Macao. The English adventurers were not satisfied with the privilege of anchoring so far from the great emporium, but direct trade with Canton had yet to be fought for. The energetic Captain Weddell, commanding the ship London, in 1655 met the obstructive tactics of the Cantonese authorities by bombarding the Bogue forts and forcing his way up the river, after which he was received in friendly audience by the viceroy, and was granted full participation in the Canton trade, much to the chagrin, it is said, of the jealous Macao merchants.

The loss of its own direct commerce was thus compensated for by the tribute which the Portuguese colony was able to levy upon the general trade of China, by whomsoever carried on. Massive houses, with immense verandahs running all round them, and spacious and cool interior recesses, attest to this day the ancient glory of Macao. Though now neglected, and perhaps converted to baser uses, they afford a glimpse of the easy life led by the Company's agents and the merchants in the days before the treaty. During the business season, which was in the cool months, the whole mercantile community repaired to the factories at Canton while the ships lay at the deep-water anchorage of Whampoa, and between these two points the work of the year was done--arduous enough, no doubt, while it lasted. In spite of some contemporary testimony to the contrary, one can hardly conceive the quasi-imprisonment within the Canton factories as a kind of life to be enjoyed, but only as one to be endured for an object. At any rate, when the last cargo of tea had been shipped off the scene was like the break-up of a school. The merchants and their whole establishment betook themselves to their sumptuous river barges, and glided down the stream to Macao, where the luxury of a long holiday awaited them. Once at least in every year the foreigners were in full accord with the Chinese authorities, who sternly forbade loitering, and kept up the form of peremptorily sending the merchants away as soon as their business had been done. Nevertheless, those who desired to remain found no difficulty.

The Portuguese colony, whether or not under compulsion, played an ungracious part in the troubles which preceded the outbreak of war between Great Britain and China. To evict from their houses a company of helpless people and drive them to sea, even at the bidding of an oriental tyrant, was a proceeding little in keeping with the traditions of Lusitanian chivalry. But Englishmen may very well forgive the Portuguese this act of inhumanity, since it compelled the fugitives to seek a home of their own in the Canton waters, destined to eclipse the fading glories of "la cidade do nome de Deos da Macao."

The treaty of 1842, which enabled British merchants to set up house for themselves, deprived Macao of a large portion of its revenue; but even under this eclipse the era of its prosperity did not then come quite to an end.

The occupation of Hongkong supplied to British traders all the wants which Macao had previously furnished, accompanied by a security which the Portuguese Administration was unable to confer. Its harbour was incomparably superior, fulfilling all the requirements of a modern seaport. These advantages were irresistible; nevertheless, the merchants vacated with evident reluctance the roomy mansions in which the pleasantest part of their lives had been spent. Several of them retained possession of their Macao homes, using them for purposes of recreation. "Dent's comfortable quarters at Macao" afforded an agreeable retreat for Admiral Keppel, and no doubt many others of the nautical brotherhood before and after his time; for the sea-breezes of Macao were almost as great a relief to the denizens of Queen's Road as to the community which, after the treaty, was permanently quartered in the Canton factories. To this day Macao, well served by fast and commodious steamers, remains a favoured resort for week-end tourist parties, picnics, honeymoons, and the like.

The population of Macao is estimated at 75,000 Chinese and under 4000 Portuguese, of whom the percentage of pure blood is not large. The so-called Portuguese of the Chinese coast differ from those of Goa as the Chinese differ from the Indian natives. They supply a want in the general economy: in China, as clerks, for whose work they have, like the indispensable babu, a natural aptitude; in India, as domestic and personal servants. With the increase of typewriting and the practice of dictation in mercantile establishments the clerical services of the Macaese are likely to assume less importance. They are good Catholics, smoke cigarettes, and are harmless.

Though for many years Macao suffered depression from the loss of its foreign trade, its natural advantages in course of time attracted to it new branches of industry, which to some extent revived its drooping prosperity. Foreign and native merchants found it convenient to conduct a certain portion of their trade in tea and silk and other articles in the quiet old city, where burdens were light and labour abundant. Traffic of a less desirable character found also its natural domicile in the colony. It became the headquarters of the lucrative coolie trade, which there for many years found an asylum where it feared no law, human or divine. To the credit of the Portuguese Government, however, this traffic was abolished in 1874. Opium and gambling licences now provide the chief contributions to a colonial revenue, the surplus of which over expenditure furnishes a respectable annual tribute to the needy mother country.

There is yet another species of enterprise historically associated with the colony which cannot be altogether omitted, though it should be mentioned with the extenuating circumstances. Piracy, as we have seen, was rampant on the coasts of Asia, as it was also in Europe, before Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape; and it was not to be expected in an age when successful buccaneers in the Atlantic were earning distinction by harassing the common enemy Spain, that an isolated colony in remote Asia, detached from Europe a century and a half earlier, should have anticipated the ethical refinements of the awakening conscience of Christendom. Slavery itself was tolerated among the most enlightened races until the middle of the present century, and if the Macaese did feel a sneaking toleration for mitigated forms of it, as well as for other species of criminality which flourished all round them, it must be admitted the temptation lay very near to their hand. They had been brought up for centuries in close familiarity with the practices of the sea-rover. Though it cannot be said that piracy ever took rank as a domestic institution in patriarchal Macao, yet the openings for young men were much restricted by family custom, and instances have been reported of improvident sons laying unfilial hands on their fathers' junks on the coast with a view to rectifying the balance of the family finance. Whether or not such modes of redress were ever actually carried into effect, the fact that legends of this character should have woven themselves into the tissue of local gossip within comparatively recent times, and in connection with well-known names, indicates a state of feeling which should be allowed for in considering the relation of Macao to Chinese piracy.

The influence of Macao on the history of foreign relations with China extended much beyond the sphere of mere commercial interests. For three hundred years it was for foreigners the gate of the Chinese empire, and all influences, good and bad, which came from without were infiltrated through that narrow opening, which also served as the medium through which China was revealed to the Western world. It was in Macao that the first lighthouse was erected, a symbol of the illuminating mission of foreigners in China. It was there also that the first printing-press was set up, employing movable type instead of the stereotype wooden blocks used by the Chinese. From that press was issued Morrison's famous Dictionary, and for a long series of years the Chinese Repository, a perfect storehouse of authentic information concerning the Chinese empire, conducted chiefly by English and American missionaries. The first foreign hospital in China was opened at Macao, and there vaccination was first practised. It was from Macao that the father of China missions, Matteo Ricci, started on his adventurous journey through the interior of the country in the sixteenth century, ultimately reaching the capital, where he established an influence over the Imperial Court scarcely less than miraculous, thus laying the foundation-stone of the Catholic propaganda in China. The little Portuguese settlement has therefore played no mean part in the changes which have taken place in the great empire of China.

Of the personages associated with its history, the most brilliant, or at least the best known, was St Francis Xavier, the apostle of the Indies,--a man of so magnetic a character that he was credited with the miraculous gift of tongues, while as a matter of fact he seems not to have been even an ordinarily good linguist, speaking to the natives of the Far East only through an interpreter. Xavier died and was buried in the neighbouring island of Sanchuan, whence his remains were transferred first to Macao itself and afterwards to Goa. The names of Xavier and Ricci cast a halo over the first century of the existence of Macao. Another of the earlier residents of world-wide fame was the poet Camöens, who in a grotto formed of granite blocks tumbled together by nature, almost washed by the sea, sat and wrote the Portuguese epic 'The Lusiad,' celebrating the adventures of the great navigator Vasco da Gama. Of names belonging to the present century, or the English period, two only need be mentioned here. One was Robert Morrison, the father of English sinology, who was sent to China by the London Missionary Society in 1807. This remarkable man had mastered the initial difficulties of the Chinese language before leaving England. This he accomplished by the aid of a young Cantonese, and by diligent study of MSS. in the British Museum, and of a MS. Latin-Chinese dictionary lent to him by the Royal Society. His teacher accompanied him on the long voyage to China, during which Morrison laboured "from morning to midnight." In Canton a Pekingese teacher, a Catholic convert, was obtained, and the study of Chinese was carried on assiduously. The most enduring monument of these labours was the Chinese-English dictionary, which was printed by the East India Company at a cost of £15,000. This standard work has been the fountain from which all students of Chinese have drawn since his time.

Art has had but one representative, an Irish gentleman named George Chinnery, who resided in Macao from 1825 till his death in 1852. Of Mr Chinnery's drawings and paintings there are many scattered collections, on some of which we have been able to draw for the illustrations in these volumes.

FOOTNOTE:

[36] Nomenclature alone sufficiently attests this fact--whether of the ships that carried them or of the lands they christened, as Natal, Trinidad, &c. The gigantic cross carved in the granite face of Table Mountain (it is said) by Vasco da Gama proclaimed to the wide ocean the sanctity of his mission. English adventurers were strongly imbued with the same pious spirit. Down to our own day marine policies open with the words, "In the name of God, Amen"; while the bill of lading, which within the past generation has become packed with clauses like a composite Act of Parliament--all tending to absolve the owner from responsibility as carrier--formerly began with the words, "Shipped by the grace of God," and ended with the prayer that "God would send the good ship to her desired port in safety."