" (...) To look at Macao, as the steamer heads into its picturesque bay, see its imposing buildings, its convents and cathedrals, its praya and its batteries, with green hills and tree-embowered villas, no one would guess that this was the home of poverty and longdeparted prosperity - where bankrupt aliens find a refuge, and a mongrel race of Portuguese, Chinese, and Africans from Goa, all commingled, swarm, and breed, and live - God only knows how ! Once great and wealthy (built up chiefly with the gold and the spoils of Japan), in the pride of triumphant rivalry with Great Britain in her Eastern trade, then only in its infancy, it had long fallen into the sere and yellow leaf of a gradual decay, when our first war with China gave one of those chances which - to nations as to individuals - seldom come more thanonce in a cycle, of seizing fortune in its passage, and emergingfrom poverty to wealth, had those who governed only beengifted with sufficient prescience to see their opportunity. Theyhad but to declare it a Free port, and shake off the evil spell of mandarin rule, to become the great emporium of Western trade - become what Hongkong now is. It may, at all events, admit of question, if this bold and vigorous step had been taken at the right moment, whether, notwithstanding all the disadvantages of a shallow bay and bad anchorage attaching to Macao, the new colony of Hongkong would ever have beenadopted as the head-quarters of British houses. With its impracticable hills, its sultry and unhealthy atmosphere, its inconvenient distance from the main land, and the rivers which form the great lines of traffic between the interior and the coast, nothing could be less inviting.
It had, originally, but one recommendation, in the natural advantage of a tine bay. But to this the British Government could attach freedom fromall the petty worry and vexatious exactions of corruption - in the hybrid form of a Portuguese colony, crossed by a Chinesecustom house. And above all, perhaps, security to life andproperty, only to be found in those latitudes under the British flag. We were very slow, however, as is our wont, to makeup our minds. Our merchants did not move; and an offer was even made to the Portuguese Government to purchase their right of possession of Macao, such as it was, under Chinese rule. Fortunately for us, in some respects at least, the pride of Portugal refused to cede this last poor relic of former greatness; and while we were thus groping our way, they missedthe only chance in a century of bringing back trade and wealth to their starving colony, by declaring it a free port, and ridding themselves of the incubus of a Chinese custom-house.
With a curious inconsistency, they took this very step, and ejected the Chinese officials when it was too late by ten years to profit them; and the bold step only cost the Governor his life, without any corresponding advantage to his country. to be as unfortunate for a man to arrive too late as too early, on the world's stage, when he has a part to play. Ten years earlier he might have changed the destiny of the two colonies; coming too late, he only sacrificed himself and changed nothing. Millions of dollars had then been expended on the sunbaked and sterile hills of Hongkong - by the Government, in roads, and barracks, and public offices; by our own merchants and those of other nations, in houses and godowns - driven at last to this expensive alternative by the vexatious impediments to which their trade was exposed in Macao, under the joint Chinese and Portuguese rule. Trade had irrevocably followed the heads and the purses which gave it vitality; and not even the pleasant hills and green shade of Macao, nor its fresher breezes, could ever while them back again.
It is but a four hours' passage from Hongkong to Macao, and a passenger lands on the praya, while the convent bells fill the air with their chimes, feeling as though he had traversed a whole hemisphere in that short space - passed into another climate, and suddenly found himself in an old watering-place on the coast of Portugal in the year 1600! Here dark-tinted women in their black Mantos saunter through the streets, as to this day they saunter in the provincial towns of Portugal. The bright-colored kerchief round the head, and swarthy skins, meeting you at every step, tell of long connection with Goa and African possessions. Dwarfed children of all hues under the sun, and lazy-looking monks, or sable-i'obed padres, with portentous shovel hats, either drone through the halfdeserted streets (become too large for its population where the Chinese do not fill up the space), or help to swell some monkish procession, wending its way to the cathedral, precisely as did Spaniards and Portuguese alike in bygone centuries (when Auto-da-Fe's were more in vogue), and presenting the same pictures and groups as may still be seen m the land of their birth. ' Coelum non animam mutant' is indeed specially true in this Portuguese colony. (...)
Ilustração e excerto de texto de "The capital of the tycoon: a narrative of a three years'residence in Japan". 2 volumes. Da autoria de Rutherford Alcock. Publicado em Nova Iorque em 1863.
Rutherford Alcock (1809-1897) foi um médico e diplomata britânico. Entre 1844 e 1846 foi cônsul em Fuzhou e Xangai na China. Em 1858 foi nomeado cônsul-geral no Japão e enviado extraordinário e ministro plenipotenciário. É deste último período que trata este livro.
