Before visiting the great city of the Celestial Empire let glance for a moment at Macao where we passed a few days feasting our eyes on the people of the various nations who here assembled.
Macao is a Portuguese town favorably on a small bay seventy miles from Canton near the mouth of river Tigris or Hong river. It is surrounded by high hills from one of which you have a fine view of the city and its harbor the latter of which is chiefly used by the natives.
The Praya Grande or principal street faces on the bay forming a semi circle. It is paved with smooth stones and serves both as a street or quay and as a breakwater to protect the houses from the violence of waves during the notheasterly monsoon. This bay presents one of the busiest scenes that I have ever beheld. Here may be seen boat women of very small stature sculling their tanker boats in every direction opium smugglers with their forty sweeps beating gongs and firing guns as a signal for their departure fastboats and fish boats rounding to near the beach with their various stores and the distinguishable cries of various Chinamen all of which combine to present as lively a scene as can be met with either in the Eastern or Western world.
As for the accommodations here little can be said in their praise they are much inferior to the public houses at Hong Kong. The company is transient the ships stopping here only for a few days to obtain provisions and other necessary outfits though they sometimes tranship part of their cargo. The charges at these hotels are much higher than at the best public houses in our country and yet the fare is poor. Strangers however are generally invited to stay at the houses of the consignees of the ship where they are very comfortably situated and hospitably entertained. Here we passed a few days when we proceeded up the river to the great city.
Besides the fish pilots who take the ship up the river there are many bar boats required which lie along the edge of the bars to indicate the line through which the ship can pass many of the passages are exceedingly narrow and difficult without them. Of the money paid to these men twothirds of it is squeezed from them by the petty mandarins. At certain stations on the river one may see the pilots counting out their tchen or mace which are tied together in little bundles of one hundred each.
These are the only coin issued by the government of China they are a composition of copper and zinc having a square hole in the centre. Many of them have found their way to this country. We passed the Bogue Forts which were completely riddled by the English and went on shore to see the forts on Wantong. One of their immense guns covered with Chinese characteristics was lying under the walls apparently spiked. The fort was remarkably well made and with but a few experienced men must have commanded the river as it is elevated above the ordinary range of a ship's gun yet we know that two well manned frigates destroyed both. The anchorage ground at Whampoa is fourteen miles from the city which must be approached in small boats. (...)
Este excerto é retirado da edição de 9 de Novembro de 1844 do jornal The New World (Nova Iorque, EUA) que publicou "Extracts from a journal on a voyage to China - A Voyage to the Celestial Empire" / Excertos de um Diário de uma Viagem à China - Viagem ao Império Celeste".
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