The harbor of Hong Kong is a very commodious and well-sheltered one, in the shape of a half-moon, and its three entrances of Green Island, Cap-sing-moon, and Lymoon passages, can not be seen from its centre. On a shelf which makes a circular sweep, cut at the base of towering volcanic hills, is built the town named in honor of the present sovereign of Great Britain. Victoria, from the water, presents a fine appearance, with its stuccoed warehouses, or “go-downs,” at the beach, and the private residences and churches rising from plateaus made by immense labor above; and the massive stone government offices and barracks that appear on the left, tell how firmly the English plant their foot in the East, and how triumph, with them, is synonymous with occupancy of a slice of an enemy’s territory. This colony is the result of their opium war in China. Our stay was short: the commodore despatched the “Plymouth” to Shanghae, and, in the Mississippi, ran over to Macao, an inland run of thirty-nine miles.
We anchored in Macao roads about mid-day, perhaps on the very spot, where a sailor’s malice fired a magazine, and blew high in air, with a noise like thunder, the atoms that composed the Portuguese frigate _Donna Maria_, some years before. Macao, though in, is not of China; instead of the low hut-like structures of unburnt blue brick and fantastic tile of the Celestial, the eye, as it takes in the fine sweep of the Praya, rests on large mansions whose verandahs exclude the sun, whose portals are spacious and stylish, and whose stucco little discolored by time, only appears all the more impressive, and sees rising on the eminence behind venerable cathedrals; while garrisons, crown batteries, and old-looking forts on either side, with the ensign of Portugal, define its ownership, and make the picture more imposing. It was here that the zeal of the Jesuit commenced the propagation of his faith and questioned the ethics of Confucius; it was here that the “glory and shame” of Portugal—one-eyed Camoens—disgusted at the country which could neither appreciate his genius nor reward his courage, spent in voluntary exile five years of his life and completed the Lusiad—that poem which, when shipwrecked, he saved from destruction by swimming and holding it above water, and that was ultimately to meet with the worse fate of being rendered into another language by Fanshaw. It was here that the English displayed the surreptitious boldness of carrying away, by the power of arms, from Portuguese custody, a missionary who had been guilty of the bad manners and overt nonsense of offending people not his own, by a refusal of compliance with a very ordinary custom, on the occasion of a catholic procession, at a time when the authorities and the greater part of the population were witnessing a boat regatta in their harbor; and it was at the outer barrier of Macao, that its governor, a few years ago, while taking an evening ride with one of his aids, was cut to pieces by the revengeful Chinamen, because of his having caused a road to be made through one of their burial-places in the vicinity.