"Macao, the city of Camoens"

"Fankwei Or, The San Jacinto in the Seas of India, China, and Japan" é um livro da autoria de William Maxwell Wood publicado em 1859.

A viagem começou em Outubro de 1855 no porto de Nova Iorque (EUA) a bordo da fragata de guerra a vapor San Jacinto, dos EUA.

O capítulo 24 é sobre Macau e tem como título "Macao, the city of Camoens". Excerto:

My cradle was the couch of Care

And Sorrow rocked me in it

Fate seemed her saddest robe to wear

On the first day that saw me there

And darkly shadowed with despair

My earliest minute

For I was made in Joy's despite

And meant for Misery's slave

And all my hours of brief delight

Fled like the speedy winds of night

Which soon shall wheel their sullen flight

Across my grave

Camoens translated by Lord Strangford

Porto de Nome de Deos, Porto de Amacao, Cidade de Santo Nome de Deos de Macao and, as a final contraction, Macao alone.

In these latter days Macao to the traveler is Camoens as Stratford upon Avon is Shakspeare. Hence my melancholy quotations from the composition of the poet as I draw near the place which is eminent as the refuge of the fortune stricken bard and the locality of the solitary cave in which he nursed his muse. I have much respect and admiration for decayed gentry those who show forth the dignity and refinement of past state and pomp beneath the softening influences of pres ent privation and adversity.

They present the picturesque in the social scene as the crumbling tower touched by the setting sun does in the natural. Therefore such old towns as Macao are pleasant to me made up of great massy old houses surrounded by grounds darkened by trees and tangled in shrubbery which with the crabbed independence of age has a will of its own above all trimmings and trainings. The families occupying these homes pleasant quiet people they are every one says how they live no one knows are polished dignified unobtrusive and always seeming to say by their amiable mild deportment. It is affection not pride which makes us cling to the old home and the associations of all that is left us our family history What have such people to do with the fuss and struggle and turmoil of the present. Their lives are in the past they are dreamy looking people even the children look so and all the family have their hopes resting upon that thoughtful looking boy and pensive girl who are just coming into life. By them the sinking star of the house is to close in darkness or rise to its former brilliancy. There is a charming contrasted repose in such a quiet old town as Macao to one who three hours before leaves the upstart fussy pretension of Hong Kong where every body is trying to be somebody and nobody believes that anybody else is anything.

The natural site of Macao is picturesque. It climbs up the sides and through the ravines of a group of hills the summits of which are topped by old castles and convents. Conspicuous among the ruins of Macao on one of these hill tops is the front wall of an old church standing out sharp and clear upon its elevation. Only this front wall remains its ragged edges and window openings cushioned with moss and fringed with the wild foliage which time has planted. The stone faced mole or praya which curves in front of the city was in former days the scene of a bustling com merce but is now the pleasant quiet promenade of those who have nothing better to do. Besides this Portuguese and foreign Macao there is in the low grounds of the city a dense mass of a Chinese town and the combined population, Portuguese, foreign, Chinese, Malay and mixed is about thirty thousand.

At the mouth of the Tigris and as a sea port of Canton before Hong Kong sprung up Macao had a day of commercial prosperity. For over three hundred years it has been a foreign settlement. The general impression is that it was given the Portuguese as a reward for their having suppressed piracy on the coast. But there is no evidence that there has ever been any relinquishment of sovereignty on the part of the Chinese authorities. The Portuguese claim seems to be but that of possession at first tolerated then permitted and now acknowledged in fact if not in name. Provisions are abundant and good the climate pleas ant and healthful and it is the chosen retreat of the business worn merchants of Canton and Hong Kong the refuge of those whose fortunes have been broken and the residence of the foreign legations all of whom make up an agreeable society whose chief occupation and amusement is social intercourse.

The English and American difficulties with the Chinese and the blockade of Canton have somewhat revived the activity of Macao. Even in the worst times there is always some animation on the praya and the sea which washes it in the group of Tanka boats and the girls who I was going to say man them and as these girls really do the hard labor of men the nautical verb may remain. These picturesque white teethed laughing mouthed bandana kerchief head ed nymphs live on the water and make their living by landing passengers from the steamers which run between Macao and Hong Kong and did in time past run be tween this port and Canton and in rowing to the bath ing places the business and dissipation worn wretches who retreat for a few weeks to Macao to tone up. And at these bathing places too often the unblushing immod esty of the civilized Christian belies his country and his training and outrages those whose necessities compel them to do him service.

The commercial foreign resident of China too often looks upon the native as in no wise superior to brute beasts and an abiding contempt of the judgment and ability of missionaries on the part of the commercial com munity rests partly upon the fact that missionaries will regard Chinese as human beings partly perhaps upon the fact that those who make wealth their aim have a pity for the stupidity of those who live for other objects.

The Tanka boat people are said to be of an unknown race distinct from Tartar or Chinese. They have their own customs the females never contract their feet they marry among themselves Where the men live and how I do not know. Among the various kinds of barometers natural and artificial few are more accurate than these Tanka boat girls. The wind is a little fresh this evening nothing remarkable the bay is just tossed into short curling waves not so rough but that the freshness rather invites you to go before it and take a pull in a Tanka boat. You can not do it. See now what an animated scene the praya presents. Life has rushed or is rushing up from the water to the land. The damsels are helping each other pulling and tugging dragging their boats up the inclined planes of the stone jetty and moving them on rollers up and down the praya until they form a village of mat roofed houses. You had better not try your water ex cursion now even if you could persuade the ladies to take you. Go home if you happen to have a home and care any thing for it and put in your heavy typhoon bars over doors and windows and most likely before morning comes these bars will be bending like twigs. I have heard the winds in these tempests come dashing against the windows in gusty blasts until the stout bars bowed and bent as though they must violently break and open the room to the tempest.

During my residence on the coast of China there came one of these typhoons so violently and suddenly at Macao as to grind up the boats which were caught out and destroy many lives Macao rests its association with genius not alone upon the fame of Camoens. It has also that of the painter Chinnery. Who was Chinnery I dare say most of you will ask. He died at Macao where he had lived for some time an octogenarian genius too great a man intrinsically to be little great externally. He loved the productions of his talent better than he did fame or money With a few single touches of his pen or unstudied dashes of his brush he produced living effects which no care and elaboration of the less gifted could effect. Many especially in Philadelphia may have seen the engraving by Sartain of the old Chinese merchant Howqua after an original painting by Chinnery. (...)

The cave of Camoens is in the grounds of a private residence. It has been so perverted by art as to lose all that is picturesque. During the whole of my visit to Macao of about two weeks duration it rained incessantly. (...)