Directory_and_Chronicle_1911 — Page 1229

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MACAO

Hongkong, is given in the Chinese Customs returns from Lappa as Tls. 16,447,346, showing a decrease of two and a quarter million dollars as compared with the returns for 1908. As the harbour is fast silting up, however, most of the native trade will soon desert the place unless efficient dredging operations are inaugurated. Some work has recently been done in this direction, but the operations have been on a small scale. The Home Government, some time ago, decided to carry out an extensive scheme for the improvement of the harbour, and a Commissioner spent the year 1907 at Macao in connection with the scheme. A beginning was made in 1909, the Lisbon Government having decided to grant an annual appropriation for this purpose. Owing to its being open to the south-west breezes and the quietude always prevailing, Macao has become a frequent retreat of invalids and business men from Hongkong and other neighbouring ports. The principal hotels are the Boa Vista, the Macao Hotel and the Oriental Hotel.

The Hongkong, Canton, and Macao Steamboat Company run two steamers daily between Macão and Hongkong, leaving the former port at 7.30 o'clock a.m. and 2 pai and Hongkong at 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. A Chinese Company runs a regular steamer daily between Hongkong and Macao. Between Macao and Canton there is a daily steam service, Saturdays excepted. The distance from Macao to Hongkong is 405 miles, and to Canton 88 miles. Macao is connected with Hongkong by telegraph. The population of Macao, with its dependencies of Taipa and Colowan, according to returns made in 1896, was-Chinese, 74,568; Portuguese, 3,898; other nationalities, 161; or a total of 78,627. Of the Portuguese 3,106 were natives of Macao, 615 natives of Portugal, and 177 natives of other Portuguese possessions. Of the foreigners 80 were natives of Great Britain. In November, 1901, an Envoy Extraordinary arrived from Portugal, his mission being to arrange with the Chinese Government for a delimitation of the boundary of the Colony. The line of demarcation submitted by the Envoy included certain islands which the Chinese Government refused to acknowledge as being part of the Portuguese colony, and the Envoy, while not successful in gaining this point, secured a concession for a railway from Macao to Canton. The convention, however, did not meet with the approval of the Córtes at Lisbon, and Senhor Branco came to the East again in 1994. In November a new agreement was arranged with the Chinese Government, but the Government at Lisbon regarded the terins as far from satisfactory, and refused ratification. It was announced in the local Press that a syndicate of Chinese and Portuguese capitalists had subscribed a capital of four million dollars for the construction of the railway, but there are no indications at present of a commencement being made with the work, and it is generally doubted whether a railway through a district so well provided with waterways would prove. remunerative. A railway 50 miles in length is, however, being constructed under Chinese direction in the Sunning district, and this will doubtless beneficially affect trade and commerce in the neighbourhood of Macao. A New Commercial Treaty was arranged with China in November, 1904. In accordance with the Treaty of 1887 the Governments of China and Portugal in 1999 appointed Commissioners to delimitate the boundaries of Macao and its Dependencies, but China would not admit Portugal's title to half the territory claimed, and the Portuguese Commissioner interrupted the negotiations after they had been in progress nearly four months and proposed a reference to the dispu ́e to The Hague Arbitration Tribunal. China has definitively refused to agree to this, and so the position remains as it has always been. In 1910 the Portuguese authorities asserted their jurisdiction over the island of Colowan by clearing the place of a piratical horde which had terrorised the whole delta. Macao is garrisoned with European Portuguese troops. On November about two hundred of these troops revolted and surrounded the governor, whom they regarded as being out of sympathy with the Republican régime at Lisbon. They demanded, among other things, the in- mediate execution of the degree for the expulsion of the religious orders, and compliance with this demand has resulted in a lamentable disorganisation of educational and philanthropic work in the Colony.