The Chinese are everywhere found enterprising and trustworthy men of business. Europeans, worried by the exhaustless refinements of the Marwarree or Bengali, find business with the Chinese in the Straits Settlements a positive luxury. Nor have the persecutions of the race in the United States and in self-governing British colonies wholly extinguished the spark of honour which the Chinese carry with them into distant lands. An old "'Forty-niner," since deceased, related to the writer some striking experiences of his own during a long commercial career in San Francisco. A Chinese with whom he had dealings disappeared from the scene, leaving a debt to Mr Forbes of several thousand dollars. The account became an eyesore in the books, and the amount was formally "written off" and forgotten. Some years after, Mr Forbes was surprised by a visit from a weather-beaten Chinese, who revealed himself as the delinquent Ah Sin and asked for his account. Demurring to the trouble of exhuming old ledgers, Mr Forbes asked Ah Sin incredulously if he was going to pay. "Why, certainly," said the debtor. The account was thereupon rendered to him with interest, and after a careful examination and making some corrections, Ah Sin undid his belt and tabled the money to the last cent, thereupon vanishing into space whence he had come.

CHAPTER XIV.

HONGKONG.

Two British landmarks—Chinese customs and Hongkong—Choice of the island—Vitality of colony—Asylum for malefactors—Chinese official hostility—Commanding commercial position—Crown Colony government—Management of Chinese population—Their improvement—English education—Material progress—Industrial institutions—Accession of territory.

The past sixty years of war and peace in China have left two landmarks as concrete embodiments of British policy—the Chinese maritime customs and the colony of Hongkong. These are documents which testify in indelible characters both to the motives and to the methods of British expansion throughout the world. For good and for evil their record cannot be explained away. Both institutions are typically English, inasmuch as they are not the fulfilment of a dream or the working out of preconcerted schemes, but growths spontaneously generated out of the local conditions, much like that of the British empire itself, and with scarcely more conscious foresight on the part of those who helped to rear the edifice.

The relation of the British empire to the world, which defies definition, is only revealed in scattered object-lessons. India throws some light upon it—the colonies much more; and though in some respects unique in its character, Hongkong in its degree stands before the world as a realisation of the British ideal, with its faults and blunders as well as with its excellences and successes.

The want of a British station on the China coast had long been felt, and during the ten years which preceded the cession innumerable proposals were thrown out, some of which distinctly indicated Hongkong itself as supplying the desideratum. But as to the status of the new port the various suggestions made neutralised each other, until the course of events removed the question out of the region of discussion and placed it in the lap of destiny.

The earliest English visitors to the island described it as inhabited by a few weather-beaten fishermen, who were seen spreading their nets and drying their catch on the rocks. Cultivation was restricted to small patches of rice, sweet-potatoes, and buckwheat. The abundance of fern gave it in places an appearance of verdure, but it was on the whole a treeless, rugged, barren block of granite. The gentlemen of Lord Amherst's suite in 1816, who have left this record, made another significant observation. The precipitous island, twelve miles long, with its deep-water inlets, formed one side of a land-locked harbour, which they called Hongkong Sound, capable of sheltering any number of ships of the largest size. Into this commodious haven the English fugitives, driven first from Canton and then from Macao, by the drastic decree of the Chinese authorities in 1839, found a refuge for their ships, and afterwards a footing on shore for themselves. Stern necessity and not their wills sent them thither. The same necessity ordained that the little band, once lodged there, should take root, and growth followed as the natural result of the inherent vitality of the organism. As Dr Eitel well points out, this small social body did not originate in Hongkong: it had had a long preparatory history in Macao, and in the Canton factories, and may be considered, therefore, in the light of a healthy swarm from the older hives.

During the first few years of the occupation the selection of the station was the subject of a good deal of cheap criticism in the press. A commercial disappointment and a political failure, it was suggested by some that the place should be abandoned. It was contrasted unfavourably with the island of Chusan, which had been receded to China under the same treaty which had ceded Hongkong to Great Britain; and even as late as 1858 Lord Elgin exclaimed, "How anybody in their senses could have preferred Hongkong to Chusan seems incredible."

But, in point of fact, there had been little or no conscious choice in the matter. The position may be said to have chosen itself, since no alternative was left to the first British settlers. As for Chusan, it had been occupied and abandoned several times. The East India Company had an establishment there in the beginning of the eighteenth century, and if that station was finally given up either on its merits or in favour of Hongkong, it was certainly not without experience of the value of the more northerly position. Whatever hypothetical advantages, commercial or otherwise, might have accrued from the retention of Chusan, the actual position attained by Hongkong as an emporium of trade, a centre of industry, and one of the great shipping ports in the world, furnishes an unanswerable defence both of the choice of the site and the political structure which has been erected on it. Canton being at once the centre of foreign trade and the focus of Chinese hostility, vicinity to that city was an indispensable condition of the location of the British entrepot, and the place of arms from which commerce could be defended. And it would be hard even now to point to any spot on the Chinese coast which fulfilled the conditions so well as Hongkong.

The course of its development did not run smooth. It was not to be expected. The experiment of planting a British station in contact with the most energetic as well as the most turbulent section of the population of China was not likely to be carried out without mistakes, and many have been committed. Indeed, from the day of its birth down to the present time domestic dissensions and recriminations respecting the management of its affairs have never ceased.

This was inevitable in a political microcosm having neither diversity of interest nor atmospheric space to soften the perspective. The entire interests of the colony were comprised within the focal distance of myopic vision. Molehills thus became mountains, and the mote in each brother's eye assumed the dimensions of animalcula seen through a microscope. The bitter feuds between the heads of the several departments of the lilliputian Government which prevailed during the first twenty years must have been fatal to any young colony if its progress had depended on the wisdom of its rulers. Happily a higher law governs all these things.

Freedom carried with it the necessary consequences, and for many years the new colony was a tempting Alsatia for Chinese malefactors, an asylum for pirates, who put on and off that character with wonderful facility, and could hatch their plots there fearless of surveillance. When the Taiping rebellion was at its height, piracy became so mixed with insurrection that the two were not distinguishable, and it required both firmness and vigilance on the part of the authorities to prevent the harbour of Hongkong becoming the scene of naval engagements between the belligerents. During the hostilities of 1857-58 a species of dacoity was practised with impunity by Chinese, who were tempted by rewards for the heads of Englishmen offered by the authorities of Canton.

It cannot, therefore, be denied that the immigrants from the mainland in the first and even the second decade of its existence were leavened with an undesirable element, causing anxiety to the responsible rulers.

The Chinese authorities, as was natural, waged relentless war on the colony from its birth. Though compelled formally to admit that the island and its dependencies were a British possession, they still maintained a secret authority over the Chinese who settled there, and even attempted to levy taxes. As they could not lay hands on its trade, except the valuable portion of it which was carried on by native craft, they left no stone unturned to destroy that. By skilful diplomacy, for which they are entitled to the highest credit, they obtained control over the merchant junks trading to Hongkong, and imposed restrictions on them calculated to render their traffic impossible. By the same treaty they obtained the appointment of a British officer as Chinese revenue agent in Hongkong—a concession, however, disallowed by the good sense of the British Government. But the Chinese were very tenacious of the idea of making Hongkong a customs station, never relaxing their efforts for forty years, until the convention of 1886 at last rewarded their perseverance by a partial fulfilment of their hopes.

For reasons which, if not very lofty, are yet very human, the diplomatic and consular agents of Great Britain have never looked sympathetically on the colony—indeed have often sided with the Chinese in their attempts to curtail its rights.

Nor has the Home Government itself always treated the small colony with parental consideration. Before it was out of swaddling-clothes the Treasury ogre began to open his mouth and, like the East India Company, demand remittances. A military establishment was maintained on the island, not for the benefit of the residents, but for the security of a strategical position in the imperial system. The colonists were mulcted in a substantial share of the cost, which the governor was instructed to wring out of them. The defences themselves, however, were neglected, and allowed to grow obsolete and useless, and, if we mistake not, it was the civil community, and not the Government, that insisted on their being modernised. The compromise eventually arrived at was, that the colonists provided the guns and the imperial Government the forts. An interesting parallel to this was the case of Gibraltar, which possessed no dock until the civil community by sheer persistence, extending over many years, at length overcame the reluctance of the British Government to provide so essential an adjunct to its naval establishment. The colony had suffered much from the war with China, but the Home Government refused it any participation in the indemnity extorted from the Chinese.

But these and other drawbacks were counterbalanced, and eventually remedied, by the advantages offered by a free port and a safe harbour. Standing in the fair way of all Eastern commerce, which pays willing tribute to the colony, Hongkong attracted trade from all quarters in a steadily increasing volume, and became the pivot for the whole ocean traffic of the Far East.[35] The tide of prosperity could not be stayed—it invaded every section of the community. The character of the Chinese population was continuously raised. The best of them accumulated wealth: the poorest found remunerative employment for their labour. Crime, with which the colony had been tainted, diminished as much through the expulsive power of material prosperity as from the judicious measures of the executive Government, for the credit must not be denied to successive administrators for the improvement in the condition of the colony. Among those none was more deserving of praise than Sir Richard MacDonnell (1865-72), who on catching sight, as he entered the harbour, of an enormous building, which he was told was the jail, remarked, "I will not fill that, but stop the crime;" and he was nearly as good as his word,—a terror to evil-doers.

A Crown colony is the form of government which challenges the most pungent criticism. The elected members of its legislature, being a minority, can only in the last resort acquiesce in the decisions of the official majority who constitute the executive Government. Such a minority, however, is by no means wanting in influence, for it is, after all, publicity which is the safeguard of popular liberty. The freedom of speech enjoyed by an Opposition which has no fear of the responsibility of office before its eyes widens the scope of its criticisms, and imparts a refreshing vigour to the invective of those of its members who possess the courage of their convictions. It reaches the popular ear, and the apprehension of an adverse public opinion so stimulated can never fail to have its effect on the acts of the Administration. Under such a régime it seems natural that, other things being equal, each governor in turn should be esteemed the worst who has borne rule in the colony, and in any case his merits are never likely to be fairly gauged by any local contemporary estimate. King Stork, though fair and far-seeing, may be more obnoxious to criticism than King Log, who makes things pleasant during his official term.

Hongkong being established as a free port, the functions of Government were practically limited to internal administration, and the question of greatest importance was the control of the Chinese population which poured in. This was a new problem. Chinese communities had, indeed, settled under foreign rule before, as in the Straits Settlements, in Java, and in Manila, but at such distances from their home as rendered the settlers amenable to any local regulations which might be imposed on them. Distance even acted as a strainer, keeping back the dregs. But Hongkong was nearer to China than the Isle of Wight is to Hampshire. Evil-doers could come and go at will. It could be overrun in the night and evacuated in the morning. Spies were as uncontrollable as house-flies, and whenever it suited the Chinese Government to be hostile, they proved their power to establish such a reign of terror in the colony that it was dangerous to stray beyond the beat of the armed policeman. Clearly it was of primary importance to come to terms with the native community, to reduce them to discipline, to encourage the good and discourage the bad among the Chinese settlers. As their numbers increased the public health demanded a yet stricter supervision of their habits. Sanitary science had scarcely dawned when the colony was founded, and its teachings had to be applied, as they came to light, to conditions of life which had been allowed to grow up in independence of its requirements. To tolerate native customs, domestic habits, and manner of living, while providing for the general wellbeing of a community in a climate which at its best is debilitating, taxed the resources of the British executive, and of course gave rise to perpetual recrimination. But the thing has been accomplished. Successive conflagrations have co-operated with the march of sanitary reform and the advance in their worldly circumstances in so improving the dwellings of the population, that their housing now compares not unfavourably with that of the native cities of India. The Southern Chinese are naturally cleanly, and appreciative of good order when it is judiciously introduced among them, even from a foreign source.

A more complex question was that of bringing an alien population such as the Chinese within the moral pale of English law, for law is vain unless it appeals to the public conscience. The imposition of foreign statutes on a race nursed on oral tradition and restrained from misdoing by bonds invisible to their masters was not an undertaking for which success could be safely foretold. The effect of a similar proceeding on the subtle natives of India has been described as "substituting for a recognised morality a mere game of skill, at which the natives can give us long odds and beat us." "The mercantile and money-lending classes in India," says Mr S. S. Thorburn, "delight in the intricacy and surprises of a good case in court." With the Chinese it has been otherwise. The population of Hongkong have so far assimilated the foreign law that, whether or not it satisfies their innate sense of right, it at least governs their external conduct, and crime has been reduced very low: as for litigation, it is comparatively rare; it is disreputable, and has no place in the Chinese commercial economy.

The best proofs of their acceptance of colonial rule is the constantly increasing numbers of the Chinese residents; the concentration of their trading capital there; their investments in real estate and in local industries; their identification with the general interests of the colony, and their adopting it as a home instead of a place of temporary exile. The means employed to conciliate the Chinese must be deemed on the whole to have been successful. There was first police supervision, then official protection under a succession of qualified officers, then representation in the Colonial Legislature and on the commission of the peace. The colonial executive has wisely left to the Chinese a large measure of a kind of self-government which is far more effective than anything that could find its expression in votes of the Legislature. The administration of purely Chinese affairs by native committees, with a firm ruling hand over their proceedings, seems to fulfil every purpose of government. The aim has been throughout to ascertain and to gratify, when practicable, the reasonable wants of the Chinese, who have responded to these advances by an exhibition of public spirit which no society could excel. It is doubtful whether in the wide dominion of the Queen there are 250,000 souls more appreciative of orderly government than the denizens of the whilom nest of pirates and cut-throats—Hongkong.

As an educational centre Hongkong fulfils a function whose value is difficult to estimate. From the foundation of the colony the subject engaged the attention of the executive Government, as well as of different sections of the civil community. The missionary bodies were naturally very early in the field, and there was for a good many years frank co-operation between them and the mercantile community in promoting schools both for natives and Europeans. In time, however, either their aims were found to diverge or else their estimate of achievement differed, and many of the missionary teaching establishments were left without support.

After an interval of languor, however, new life was infused into the educational schemes of the colony. The emulation of religious sects and the common desire to bring the lambs of the flock into their respective folds inspired the efforts of the propagandists, their zeal reacting on the colonial Government itself with the most gratifying results, so far at least as the extension of the field of their common efforts was concerned.

The Chinese had imported their own school systems, while taking full advantage of the educational facilities provided by the Government and the Christian bodies. Being an intellectual race, they are well able to assimilate the best that Christendom has to offer them. But the colonial system contents itself with a sound practical commercial education, which has equipped vast numbers of Chinese for the work of clerks, interpreters, and so forth, and has thus been the means of spreading the knowledge of the English language over the coast of China, and of providing a medium of communication between the native and European mind.

The material progress of Hongkong speaks volumes for the energy of its community. The precipitous character of the island left scarcely a foothold for business or residential settlement. The strip which formed the strand front of the city of Victoria afforded room for but one street, forcing extensions up the rugged face of the hill which soon was laid out in zig-zag terraces: foundations for the houses are scarped out of the rock, giving them the appearance of citadels. The locality being subject to torrential rains, streets and roads had to be made with a finished solidity which is perhaps unmatched. Bridges, culverts, and gutters all being constructed of hewn granite and fitted with impervious cement, the storm-waters are carried off as clean as from a ship's deck. These municipal works were not achieved without great expense and skilfully directed labour, of which an unlimited supply can always be depended on. And the credit of their achievement must be equally divided between the Government and the civil community.

The island is badly situated as regards its water-supply, which has necessitated the excavation of immense reservoirs on the side farthest from the town, the aqueduct being tunnelled for over a mile through a solid granite mass. These and other engineering works have rendered Hongkong the envy of the older colonies in the Far East. No less so the palatial architecture in which the one natural product of the island has been turned to the most effective account. The quarrying of granite blocks, in which the Chinese are as great adepts as they are in dressing the stones for building, has been so extensive as visibly to alter the profile of the island.

A great deficiency of the island as a commercial site being the absence of level ground, the enterprise of the colonists has been incessantly directed towards supplying the want. Successive reclamations on the sea-front, costing of course large sums of money, have so enlarged the building area that the great thoroughfare called Queen's Road now runs along the back instead of the front of a new city, the finest buildings of all being the most recent, standing upon the newly reclaimed land. It is characteristic of such improvements, that, while in course of execution, they should be deemed senseless extravagance, due to the ambition of some speculator or the caprice of some idealist, thus perpetually illustrating the truth of the Scottish saying, "Fules and bairns should never see a thing half done." Hongkong has been no exception to so universal a rule.

The industrial enterprise of the colony has fully kept pace with its progress in other respects. The Chinese quarter resembles nothing so much as a colony of busy ants, where every kind of handicraft is plied with such diligence, day in and day out, as the Chinese alone seem capable of. The more imposing works conducted by foreigners occupy a prominent place in the whole economy of the Far East. Engineering and shipbuilding have always been carried on in the colony. Graving-docks capable of accommodating modern battleships, and of executing any repairs or renewals required by them as efficiently as could be done in any part of the world, constitute Hongkong a rendezvous for the navies of all nations. Manufactures of various kinds flourish on the island. Besides cotton-mills, some of the largest sugar-refineries in the world, fitted with the most modern improvements, work up the raw material from Southern China, Formosa, the Philippines, and other sugar-growing countries in the Eastern Archipelago, thus furnishing a substantial item of export to the Australian colonies and other parts of the world. The colony has thereby created for itself a commerce of its own, while its strategical situation has enabled it to retain the character of a pivot on which all Far Eastern commerce turns.

This pivotal position alone, and not the local resources of the place, enabled the colony to found one of the most successful financial organisations of the modern world. The Hongkong and Shanghai Bank has had a history not dissimilar from that of the colony as a whole, one of success followed by periods of alternate depression and elation. Now in the trough of the wave and now on its crest, the bank has worked its way by inherent vitality through all vicissitudes of good or bad fortune, until it has gone near to monopolising the exchange business of the Far East, and has become the recognised medium between the money-market of London and the financial needs of the Imperial Chinese administration.

It should not be overlooked as a condition of its success that the great Hongkong Bank, like all other successful joint-stock enterprises, whether in Hongkong or in China, has from its origin borne a broad international character. Though legally domiciled in a British possession, representative men of all nationalities sit on its board and take their turn in the chairmanship as it comes round. The international character, indeed, may be cited as one of the elements of the success of the colony itself. No disability of any kind attaches to alien settlers, not even exclusion from the jury panel. They are free to acquire property, to carry on business, to indulge their whims, and to avail themselves of all the resources of the colony, and enjoy the full protection of person and property which natural-born British subjects possess. They come and go at their pleasure, no questions asked, no luggage examined, no permits required for any purpose whatever coming within the scope of ordinary life. Nor are they even asked whether they appreciate these advantages or not; in fact they are as free to criticise the institutions under which they live as if they had borne their part in creating them, which, in fact, they have done, and this it is which marks the vitality of the British system, whether in the mother country or in its distant dependencies.

The exceedingly cramped conditions of life on the island having proved such an obstacle to its development, the acquisition of a portion of the mainland forming one side of the harbour was at an early period spoken of as a desideratum for the colony. The idea took no practical shape, however, until the occupation of Canton by the Allied forces under the administration of Consul Parkes; and it is one of the most noteworthy achievements of that indefatigable man that, during the time when Great Britain was in fact at war with the Government of China, he should have succeeded, on his own initiative, in obtaining from the governor of the city a lease of a portion of land at Kowloon, which was subsequently confirmed by the convention of Peking in 1860. The improvement of artillery and other means of attack on sea-forts left the island very vulnerable, and the measures taken by the various European Powers to establish naval stations on the Chinese coast, together with the efforts which the country itself was making to become a modern military Power, rendered it a matter of absolute necessity, for the preservation of the island, that a sufficient area of the adjacent territory should be included within its defences. Following the example set by Germany and Russia, the British Government concluded an arrangement with the Government of China by which the needed extension was secured to Great Britain under a ninety-nine years lease. A convention embodying this agreement was signed at Peking in June 1898.

CHAPTER XV.

MACAO.

Contrast with Hongkong—An interesting survival—Trading facilities—Relations with Chinese Government—Creditable to both parties—Successful resistance to the Dutch—Portuguese expulsion from Japan—English trading competitors enjoy hospitality of Macao—Trade with Canton—Hongkong becomes a rival—Macao eclipsed—Gambling, Coolie trade, Piracy—Population—Cradle of many improvements—Distinguished names.

The three hours' transit from Hongkong to Macao carries one into another world. The incessant scream of steam-launches which plough the harbour in all directions night and day gives place to the drowsy chime of church bells, and instead of the throng of busy men, one meets a solitary black mantilla walking demurely in the middle of a crooked and silent street. Perhaps nowhere is the modern world with its clamour thrown into such immediate contrast with that which belongs to the past.

The settlement of Macao is a monument of Chinese toleration and of Portuguese tenacity. The Portuguese learnt at an early stage of their intercourse the use of the master-key to good relations with the Chinese authorities. It was to minister freely to their cupidity, which the Portuguese could well afford to do out of the profits of their trading. To "maintain ourselves in this place we must spend much with the Chinese heathen," as they themselves said in 1593 in a letter to Philip I. Macao is, besides, an interesting relic of that heroic age when a new heaven and a new earth became the dream of European adventurers. The spot was excellently well suited for the purposes, commercial and propagandist, which it was destined to serve; for in spite of the crimes and cruelties of the sixteenth century argonauts, the religious element was strongly represented in all their enterprises.[36] Situated outside the river proper, though within its wide estuary, and open to the sea, the settlement yet communicates by an inner passage or branch of the Pearl river with the city of Canton. It possesses two sheltered harbours adequate to the nautical requirements of the Middle Ages.

The small peninsula of Macao combined business conveniences with salubrity of climate in a degree absolutely unrivalled in the torrid zone. Its picturesque scenery was always found refreshing to the eye wearied by long contemplation of brick walls, malarious swamps, or the monotonous glare of the melancholy ocean. From the Chinese point of view, also, it was an ideal location for strangers, since they could be thus kept out of sight, isolated like a ship in quarantine, and put under effective restraint. The situation lent itself to the traditional Chinese tactics of controlling barbarians by stopping their food-supply, a form of discipline of which the efficacy had been proved at an early period in the history of the colony. The Chinese adopted all the measures they could think of to confine traders to Macao, where certain indulgences were held out to them, subject to good behaviour.

The Portuguese adventurers of the early sixteenth century, to whom the modern world owes so much, did well in pitching on this "gem of the orient earth and open sea" as a link in their chain of trading stations, which extended from the coasts of Africa to the Japanese islands. To trade as such the Chinese Government never seem to have had any objection, nor, would it appear, to foreigners as such. So long as there was nought to fear from their presence, the ancient maxim of cherishing men from afar could be followed without reserve, for the Chinese are by nature not an unkindly people. Tradition, indeed, claims for the settlement of foreigners in the Cantonese archipelago a purely hospitable origin, a storm-beaten vessel having in the year 1517 received permission from the local authorities to repair damages and dry her cargo there. The Portuguese frequented several harbours before they settled at Macao, their principal station being the island of Sanchuan, where Xavier was buried. About the middle of the sixteenth century, the city of Canton being besieged by a large piratical force whose base of operations was Macao, the high provincial authorities in their extremity sought the aid of the Portuguese, who came promptly to the rescue of the city, defeated the pirates, and captured their stronghold. Moved by mixed feelings of gratitude and policy, the Canton authorities thereupon sanctioned the Portuguese occupation of Macao, not ill-pleased to set up at that strategic point so effective a counterpoise to the native pirates.

It said as much for the tact of the Portuguese as for the forbearance of the Chinese authorities that such an isolated position as that of Macao should have been held without force, and only on the prestige of past achievements, on terms of mutual amity, for nearly four hundred years. The Portuguese squatters paid to the Chinese Government a ground-rent of about £150 per annum, in consideration of which they enjoyed practical independence. "The merchants, fully aware that their settlement at Macao was due neither to any conquest, nor as a return for services by co-operating in destruction of pirates, bore in mind two principles—to be on good terms with the provincial authorities, and to improve as much as possible their exclusive trade with China." The forms of administrative authority were indeed maintained by the Chinese, their permission being required to reside and to build houses and so forth—regulations which were more vexatious, perhaps, in theory than in fact. The exercise of Chinese jurisdiction over the person was asserted with moderation as regards the Portuguese, though full authority was maintained over the native population. The Portuguese, however, became dissatisfied with the relationship which had worked smoothly for three hundred years, and when the treaty-making era arrived they sought means to improve their status. By persistent efforts they gradually freed themselves from the overlordship of China, this object being finally attained by good diplomacy in 1887, when the Imperial Government ceded to Portugal sovereign rights over Macao in consideration of assistance rendered by the colony in the collection of the Chinese opium revenue.

Macao did not escape the fortunes of the long war of commercial supremacy which was waged between Holland and Portugal, but the colony successfully resisted two attempts to reduce it in 1622 and 1627. Its resources at that period enabled the diminutive settlement even to play some part in the game of empire in China itself, for we are told that a force of 400 men from India, under the command of two Portuguese officers, proceeded by land to Peking to support the last Ming emperor in his struggle with the invading Manchus. These auxiliaries returned whence they came without seeing active service.

Although the Dutch failed to take military possession of Macao, they took other trading colonies, and succeeded eventually in wresting from the Portuguese their Asiatic commerce. They supplanted them entirely in Japan, whose "gold and spoils" had greatly enriched the colony. Being expelled, not without reason, in 1662, the Portuguese fugitives from Japan retired to Macao.

Other competitors also began to appear and to assert their right to participate in the trade of the Far East, and Macao became the hostelry for merchants of all nations, who carried on business with the great Chinese emporium, Canton. Chief among these guests were the Dutch and English East India Companies, both of which maintained establishments at Macao for some two hundred years.

The English Company had made use of the Macao anchorage first under a treaty with the viceroy of Goa, and subsequently under Cromwell's treaty with the Portuguese Government in 1654, which permitted English ships to enter all the ports in the Portuguese Indies. Before the close of the seventeenth century ships were despatched direct from England to Macao. The English adventurers were not satisfied with the privilege of anchoring so far from the great emporium, but direct trade with Canton had yet to be fought for. The energetic Captain Weddell, commanding the ship London, in 1655 met the obstructive tactics of the Cantonese authorities by bombarding the Bogue forts and forcing his way up the river, after which he was received in friendly audience by the viceroy, and was granted full participation in the Canton trade, much to the chagrin, it is said, of the jealous Macao merchants.

The loss of its own direct commerce was thus compensated for by the tribute which the Portuguese colony was able to levy upon the general trade of China, by whomsoever carried on. Massive houses, with immense verandahs running all round them, and spacious and cool interior recesses, attest to this day the ancient glory of Macao. Though now neglected, and perhaps converted to baser uses, they afford a glimpse of the easy life led by the Company's agents and the merchants in the days before the treaty. During the business season, which was in the cool months, the whole mercantile community repaired to the factories at Canton while the ships lay at the deep-water anchorage of Whampoa, and between these two points the work of the year was done—arduous enough, no doubt, while it lasted. In spite of some contemporary testimony to the contrary, one can hardly conceive the quasi-imprisonment within the Canton factories as a kind of life to be enjoyed, but only as one to be endured for an object. At any rate, when the last cargo of tea had been shipped off the scene was like the break-up of a school. The merchants and their whole establishment betook themselves to their sumptuous river barges, and glided down the stream to Macao, where the luxury of a long holiday awaited them. Once at least in every year the foreigners were in full accord with the Chinese authorities, who sternly forbade loitering, and kept up the form of peremptorily sending the merchants away as soon as their business had been done. Nevertheless, those who desired to remain found no difficulty.

The Portuguese colony, whether or not under compulsion, played an ungracious part in the troubles which preceded the outbreak of war between Great Britain and China. To evict from their houses a company of helpless people and drive them to sea, even at the bidding of an oriental tyrant, was a proceeding little in keeping with the traditions of Lusitanian chivalry. But Englishmen may very well forgive the Portuguese this act of inhumanity, since it compelled the fugitives to seek a home of their own in the Canton waters, destined to eclipse the fading glories of "la cidade do nome de Deos da Macao."

The treaty of 1842, which enabled British merchants to set up house for themselves, deprived Macao of a large portion of its revenue; but even under this eclipse the era of its prosperity did not then come quite to an end.

The occupation of Hongkong supplied to British traders all the wants which Macao had previously furnished, accompanied by a security which the Portuguese Administration was unable to confer. Its harbour was incomparably superior, fulfilling all the requirements of a modern seaport. These advantages were irresistible; nevertheless, the merchants vacated with evident reluctance the roomy mansions in which the pleasantest part of their lives had been spent. Several of them retained possession of their Macao homes, using them for purposes of recreation. "Dent's comfortable quarters at Macao" afforded an agreeable retreat for Admiral Keppel, and no doubt many others of the nautical brotherhood before and after his time; for the sea-breezes of Macao were almost as great a relief to the denizens of Queen's Road as to the community which, after the treaty, was permanently quartered in the Canton factories. To this day Macao, well served by fast and commodious steamers, remains a favoured resort for week-end tourist parties, picnics, honeymoons, and the like.

The population of Macao is estimated at 75,000 Chinese and under 4000 Portuguese, of whom the percentage of pure blood is not large. The so-called Portuguese of the Chinese coast differ from those of Goa as the Chinese differ from the Indian natives. They supply a want in the general economy: in China, as clerks, for whose work they have, like the indispensable babu, a natural aptitude; in India, as domestic and personal servants. With the increase of typewriting and the practice of dictation in mercantile establishments the clerical services of the Macaese are likely to assume less importance. They are good Catholics, smoke cigarettes, and are harmless.

Though for many years Macao suffered depression from the loss of its foreign trade, its natural advantages in course of time attracted to it new branches of industry, which to some extent revived its drooping prosperity. Foreign and native merchants found it convenient to conduct a certain portion of their trade in tea and silk and other articles in the quiet old city, where burdens were light and labour abundant. Traffic of a less desirable character found also its natural domicile in the colony. It became the headquarters of the lucrative coolie trade, which there for many years found an asylum where it feared no law, human or divine. To the credit of the Portuguese Government, however, this traffic was abolished in 1874. Opium and gambling licences now provide the chief contributions to a colonial revenue, the surplus of which over expenditure furnishes a respectable annual tribute to the needy mother country.

There is yet another species of enterprise historically associated with the colony which cannot be altogether omitted, though it should be mentioned with the extenuating circumstances. Piracy, as we have seen, was rampant on the coasts of Asia, as it was also in Europe, before Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape; and it was not to be expected in an age when successful buccaneers in the Atlantic were earning distinction by harassing the common enemy Spain, that an isolated colony in remote Asia, detached from Europe a century and a half earlier, should have anticipated the ethical refinements of the awakening conscience of Christendom. Slavery itself was tolerated among the most enlightened races until the middle of the present century, and if the Macaese did feel a sneaking toleration for mitigated forms of it, as well as for other species of criminality which flourished all round them, it must be admitted the temptation lay very near to their hand. They had been brought up for centuries in close familiarity with the practices of the sea-rover. Though it cannot be said that piracy ever took rank as a domestic institution in patriarchal Macao, yet the openings for young men were much restricted by family custom, and instances have been reported of improvident sons laying unfilial hands on their fathers' junks on the coast with a view to rectifying the balance of the family finance. Whether or not such modes of redress were ever actually carried into effect, the fact that legends of this character should have woven themselves into the tissue of local gossip within comparatively recent times, and in connection with well-known names, indicates a state of feeling which should be allowed for in considering the relation of Macao to Chinese piracy.

The influence of Macao on the history of foreign relations with China extended much beyond the sphere of mere commercial interests. For three hundred years it was for foreigners the gate of the Chinese empire, and all influences, good and bad, which came from without were infiltrated through that narrow opening, which also served as the medium through which China was revealed to the Western world. It was in Macao that the first lighthouse was erected, a symbol of the illuminating mission of foreigners in China. It was there also that the first printing-press was set up, employing movable type instead of the stereotype wooden blocks used by the Chinese. From that press was issued Morrison's famous Dictionary, and for a long series of years the Chinese Repository, a perfect storehouse of authentic information concerning the Chinese empire, conducted chiefly by English and American missionaries. The first foreign hospital in China was opened at Macao, and there vaccination was first practised. It was from Macao that the father of China missions, Matteo Ricci, started on his adventurous journey through the interior of the country in the sixteenth century, ultimately reaching the capital, where he established an influence over the Imperial Court scarcely less than miraculous, thus laying the foundation-stone of the Catholic propaganda in China. The little Portuguese settlement has therefore played no mean part in the changes which have taken place in the great empire of China.

Of the personages associated with its history, the most brilliant, or at least the best known, was St Francis Xavier, the apostle of the Indies,—a man of so magnetic a character that he was credited with the miraculous gift of tongues, while as a matter of fact he seems not to have been even an ordinarily good linguist, speaking to the natives of the Far East only through an interpreter. Xavier died and was buried in the neighbouring island of Sanchuan, whence his remains were transferred first to Macao itself and afterwards to Goa. The names of Xavier and Ricci cast a halo over the first century of the existence of Macao. Another of the earlier residents of world-wide fame was the poet Camöens, who in a grotto formed of granite blocks tumbled together by nature, almost washed by the sea, sat and wrote the Portuguese epic 'The Lusiad,' celebrating the adventures of the great navigator Vasco da Gama. Of names belonging to the present century, or the English period, two only need be mentioned here. One was Robert Morrison, the father of English sinology, who was sent to China by the London Missionary Society in 1807. This remarkable man had mastered the initial difficulties of the Chinese language before leaving England. This he accomplished by the aid of a young Cantonese, and by diligent study of MSS. in the British Museum, and of a MS. Latin-Chinese dictionary lent to him by the Royal Society. His teacher accompanied him on the long voyage to China, during which Morrison laboured "from morning to midnight." In Canton a Pekingese teacher, a Catholic convert, was obtained, and the study of Chinese was carried on assiduously. The most enduring monument of these labours was the Chinese-English dictionary, which was printed by the East India Company at a cost of £15,000. This standard work has been the fountain from which all students of Chinese have drawn since his time.

Art has had but one representative, an Irish gentleman named George Chinnery, who resided in Macao from 1825 till his death in 1852. Of Mr Chinnery's drawings and paintings there are many scattered collections, on some of which we have been able to draw for the illustrations in these volumes.