"Macao is a very pretty place"

(...) I spent about two weeks very pleasantly at Macao which was a sort of watering place of Canton. Most European merchants owned a house at Macao as well as at Canton going down to the former when they were exhausted by the hot air and imprisonment of the factories.

Macao is a very pretty place built on the side of a gently sloping hill which bends around its bay in a semicircle. The hills in its vicinity are very picturesque and in the offing are numerous lofty islands which act as a great protection to shipping in the bay.

The harbour which is a cove running around behind the town is naturally I believe as good as that of Hong Kong and had the Portuguese government been liberal enough they might during the English war with China have attracted to Macao and retained there much of the trade which afterwards centred in the British colony of Hong Kong. But they would not alter their old system of high duties which were imposed even on the importation of bullion and would do nothing for the improvement of the harbour. When Hong Kong began to reap the advantages of an opposite policy the Portuguese saw their error and endeavoured to repair the mistake by throwing Macao open as a free port but they were too late as trade had become firmly settled in the direction of Hong Kong and Macao can never in all probability be anything more than a pleasant residence for foreigners during their weeks of leisure.

The native Portuguese population who once inhabited the vast palace like residences that abound in Macao and who once formed the most flourishing and wealthy colony of Portugal are now miserably degraded by intermixture with Chinese. They speak a corrupt jargon half Chinese half their ancestral language and are most of them miserably poor and ignorant. They are an idle race and generally live on the remains of their property.

Some families manage to exist in their native fashion on as little as 80 per annum. Degraded and brutalised as this Portuguese population is in all other respects they still retain the Christian religion and the churches in size and general appearance remind one of those in Europe Macao has good sea bathing very pretty walks a good road for a drive and a pleasant society composed of such English and American families as live there constantly (at least the ladies and children) for the benefit of pure air and of a continuous stream of transitory visitors from Canton and Hong Kong. (...)

in From New York to Delhi: By Way of Rio de Janeiro, Australia and China, Robert Bowne Minturn Jr., Londres, 1858

Nota: imagem não incluída no livro