(By special arrangement with the Author.)
Where the carcase is, there also will the eagles be gathered together." China is the great carcase of Asia and round her the eagles of Europe and America press and jostle one another. England is entrenched at Hongkong and many a fat slice she has carried away. And now she is stretching another claw through t. America has half of Shanghai, and to and from San Francisco the bird of prey passes regularly in his flight. France is trying hard to carry off her share of the carcase through Tongking; and Port Arthur in the north is a hi piece fallen to the lot of a French syndicate. Herr Krupp represents Germany's chief plunder, and the Yamen of Li Hung-chang at Tientsin is a nest of commercial intrigue on behalf of the Fatherland. And Russia is laying s heavy paw upon China from the north. All this is natural enough, and so far as England and America are concerned it is the inevitable flow of trade in the channels of least resistance. But among the birds around this Asiatic carcase there is a beetle; among the birds of prey there isa parasite. The extreme south-east corner of China is the scene of the dying struggles of a mongrel fragment of a once intrepid famous race,—a fragment drawing its meagre sustenance with more difficulty every day. The hand of Vasco de Gama would have wavered upon the helm as he rounded the Cape of Good Hope, of all the men in Europe "the first that ever burst into the silent seas" of the East, if he could have foreseen to what a wretched pass and laughingstock his countrymen there would comic after less than four hundred years. The daughter of a King of Portugal was at Hongkong a few days ago. She came, of course, to visit her own people and stand under her own flag at Macao. But a glimpse was too much for her and she left within twelve hours.
Yet Macao is not such a bad place, at Around this runs @ broad boulevard, called first sight. Its bay is a perfect crescent.
the Praya Grande, shadowed with fine old Jarching banyan trees, At each horn the Portuguese flag waves over a little fort. Behind the town green wooded hills rise like an amphitheatre, and among the there and there—the Cathedral, barracks, the military hospital, the older Fort Monte. The whitewashed houses with their green blinds and wide shady porticos and verandas, from which dark eyes look idly down upon you as you pass, recall many a little Italian and Spanish town. A couple of yacht-like Portuguese gunboats lie at anchor in the river beyond the bay. On Sundays and Thursdays the band plays in the public do the buglers linger so long over the re-gardens, and surely nowhere in the world ville and the retreat as they do here every day. To the busy broker or merchant of Hongkong, who runs over here in the summer from Saturday to Monday, after a week of hard work and_ perspiration, coining dollars in a Turkish bath, Macao' is a tiny haven of rest, where the street is free from the detestable ceaseless chatter of Chinamen, where the air is fresh and the hills green, and where little "flutter" at fan-tan is' miniature and amusing substitute for the daily struggle with exchanges and settlements and short sales.
And Macao has its glorious past, too. After they had rounded the Cape the Portuguese occupied a great part of the coast of India, sent an Embassy to the Emperor of China, and occupied Ningpo. There one night 1,200 of them were murdered. So they resettled a place called Chinchow, where the same fate overtook them, Nothing daunted, they came further south and after helping the Chinese to destroy hordes of pirates were permitted to settle in peace on a small peninsula near the mouth of one of the two river approaches to Canton. Here Macao was founded in 1557, and unto 1848 the Portuguese paid a yearly rental of 500 dollars in presents or money. In 1882 when the Crown of Portugal passed to Spain, Macao followed suit. When it went back again in 1640 in the person of John IV. of Portugal, Macao—changed its flag and made ''a great donation" to the new king. At this time it was described as "g mellor e mais prosper colonial que os Portuguezes tem em todo o Oriente," the best and most prosperous colony that the Portuguese possess in all the East. 'Then its population was 19,500, By 1830 it had dwindled to 4,628, of so mixed a Dlood that only 90 persons' were registered as of pure Portuguese descent. To-day it holds 63,500 Chinese, 4,476 so-called Portuguese, and 78 others—in all 68,086. What is the explanation of this sudden enormous multiplication of its population? Like Satan, Macao was "by merit raised to that eminence." It won back its ancient prosperity by offering its houses and its traders as the last refuge in the East to that hell pom earth, the lega-lised coolie traffic. When Hongkong stopped this forever under the British Flag by the Chinese Passengers Act of 1864, Macao opened eager and unscrupulous arms to the "labour agents," and for nearly twenty years, when public opinion became too strong for even this mongrel and faraway community, the little city flourished, its inhabitants made fortunes, the Praya Grande was crowded every evening by a gay and gaudy throng, the streets were Deautitied, the cathedral was re-built, and the Portuguese colony became famous throughout the East for its elaborate religious processions and its eloquent priests. And during these twenty years uncounted thousands of coolies were decoyed, entrapped, stolen, and pirated to Bf prisoners in the gloomy *"barracoons, grated windows are still everywhere visible, theoretically certified as voluntary contract
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.