A Tour Around the World in 1884

Este excerto refere-se a uma volta ao mundo iniciada em Nova Iorque no final do século 19. O ópio e o tráfico de cules são as principais referências do autor sobre Macau num livro com cerca de 600 páginas. John B. Gorman não chega a ir a Macau.

A view among the hills near Macao, China.

Chapter XLVI From Hong Kong to Canton

Boat life and sightseeing in Canton

We wanted to see an essentially characteristic Chinese city and we could not have selected a better representative than Canton. It is eighty miles up a strong current by two magnificent lines of steam boats that run in opposition to each other. The fare had been reduced as low as one dollar but we paid three dollars each way. Sir John and I were the only first class passengers while below on the first deck there were seven hundred Chinese, many of whom were the élite of society. They paid thirty cents each for the same passage.

Our boat was a magnificent side wheeler two or three decks high purely American in every feature even to the officers who commanded it. The mouth of the Canton River not far from Hong Kong resembled an arm of the sea. There were many junks and boats dotting the vast expanse before us while over to our left some distance away gleamed Macao which for picturesqueness and beauty of situation surpasses even the city of Hong Kong.

In the summer it becomes a kind of sanitarium for the Europeans of the latter city. Macao was among the earliest European settlements in China made by the Portuguese to whom it still belongs more than three hundred years ago. Like Hong Kong, for smuggling opium, Macao has occupied as unenviable a position for its long years of revolting traffic in human flesh. Horrible stories are related of the coolie trade which the Portuguese aided by Chinamen have carried on as defiantly of law. The chief source of supply is from the numerous gambling hells in China where the Chinese having lost every thing else stake their bodies for a small sum of money advanced them by the gamblers. The gamblers then sel а them for twenty or thirty dollars to the barracoon or dealer who doubles his money. I have seen these coolies myself in Cuba brought from this very port while others go on the Pacific coast to Peru delivered there at a cost of two hundred dollars apiece."

Excerto de A Tour Around the World in 1884 Or Sketches of Travel in the Eastern and Western Hemispheres: Embracing an Account of Europe, Egypt, Palestine, India, Ceylon, Straits Settlement, China, Japan, and America. de John B. Gorman, EUA, 1886.