Directory_and_Chronicle_1870 — Page 664

Page 664 Page 664

MACAO.

HISTORICAL NARRATIVE.

(From Dungstedt's "Historical Eketch")

A few years later, 1560, Europeans settled at Macao; by what right is a topic of contention. At the arrival of the Portuguese, there issued from innumerable islands, rocks, and creeks, along the sea-coast of China, a daring set of adventurers, less intent on exercising lawful industry, than bent on plundering peaceful, industrious inhabitants. Merchants were peculiarly molested, because a successful attempt on them insures to the chief and his crew a valuable booty, to be shared among them. That the trade might be uninterrupted, the Portuguese determined to annoy and exterminate, if possible, this race, almost as vexatious to them as to the Chinese. Having cleared the gulf of China of the free-booters who had infested it, the Portuguese sought a quarrel with a Regulo, or potentate of the island, Heang-shan. The grievances that provoked the war are not men- tioned, nor is it known when the hostilities began, how long they continued, nor even the particulars of their termination. It is maintained, that after a vigorous resistance, the Regulo was subdued, the island conquered, and the victors putin possession of their share. As no covenants or treaty of peace ever appeared in public, it remains an absolute im- possibility to determine the ultimate limits of the conquest the Portuguese pretend to have made on that island. A rock towards the south-east, constituting the boundary of Heang-shan, was of course comprehended in the conquest. On that, the Portuguese fixed their abode, being particularly well suited for the carrying on of domestic and foreign trade. A town, called Cidade do nome de Deos de Macao,rose by degrees on the peninsula; not by the grace and concession of any of the Emperors of China, for such is denied, but by the success of the chivalrous arms of Portugal. The above is copied from a ministerial memorandum, drawn up fifty years ago. It is contradicted by the subsequent assertion. Chinese chronologists have noted down that in the 30th year of the reign of Kea-tsing (1535) one foreign vessel appeared, and in 1537 another, on the coast of the gulf of China. The merchants required and obtained permission to land and to raise a few huts for temporary shelter, and the drying of goods, which had been damaged on board the ships. That this accommodation was granted between 1522, when the Portuguese were driven from San-chan, and the time taken up for negociating a reconciliation, is by no means unlikely. During the lapse of eighteen or twenty years (1537 to 1557), the Chinese and the Portuguese met again, it seems for trade, either at Tamao or Lampacao. In 1557 the parties concurred at Macao, because the Mandarius permitted strangers to fix them- selves ona desert island then known by the denomination of Amangao. Such is the state- ment Fernao Mendes Pinto has given us in his peregrinations or voyages. This asser- tion is not contradicted by any of the contemporary authors, who wrote of the first exploits of their countrymen in China. The gentlemen to whom the terms could not be unknown were Jesuits, for a few of them came hither in 1562. With them, Mathew Ricci, coming (1582) from India, spent some time, and must have been intimate; being a man of leara- ing and of an enquiring spirit—a Jesuit -he naturally enough asked on what footing foreigners stood in respect to China. Had they been settled by right of conquest, hẹ would undoubtedly have recorded it in the Italian Journal he kept, the cause of the war, and the articles of pacification. Trigaulo who gathered from it many interesting notices, coutained in “Christiana expedition apud Sinas," adverts merely to the im- pression the fleet under the command of Fernao l'eres d'Andrade left on the mind of the Mandarins, whose duty it was to protect the coast from foreign invasion. John de Barros, who never saw Asia, wrote three Decades of Asia, a work continued by Dingo de Couto; both of these historians speak of the progress the Portuguese made in India and

Digitized by Google

Page 664 Page 664