into its harbour. The local
Government have taken advantage of the times, to improve the town, to
re-pave the streets, to build a new and handsome Custom-house, and to
make other improvements at John Bull's expense. The Portuguese
inhabitants of Macao amount to about five thousand, not two hundred of
whom are of pure European blood. The general population are, with few
exceptions, of a mongrel breed; a mixture of Chinese, Portuguese, and
Negroes, which it is difficult to describe. Nine-tenths of them are very
poor, but all of them are very proud, and fond of show and dress.

It is quite amusing to see the pompous strut of the men on a Sunday, as
they walk to mass in their ill-made silk coats, with gold-headed sticks
in hand. Both men and women are the worst-favoured race I ever saw:
their flat, unmeaning countenances, small, lacklustre eyes, strong,
upright, black hair, resembling hogs' bristles more than aught else, and
yellow skins, form a _tout ensemble_ any thing but pleasing. The men
adopt the European fashions. The ladies wear the mantilla; and the women
of the poorer classes wear a petticoat and small jacket, generally of
British chintz, with a mantilla of coarser material. The very poorest of
them may be seen, on Sunday morning, going to mass in silk stockings.
The wealthier Portuguese reside in large and comfortable houses, but the
lower orders inhabit wretched hovels, and suffer very severely from
sickness, particularly the small-pox; a scourge that carried off, during
the winter and spring of 1842-3, one thousand people,--just a fifth of
the whole Portuguese population. Their habits are idle and dirty. I am
not aware, indeed, of ever having seen a more filthy town than Macao. No
one seems to think that the streets were made for any other purpose than
to serve as reservoirs for all the filth of the houses that line them.
Heaps of abominable rubbish are seen here and there, which would be
still more numerous, were it not for the occasional heavy rains, which
wash down the steep streets, and carry off the accumulated masses to the
sea. A few days before Christmas 1842, the town underwent a general
sweeping; an event that did not take place again till that time
twelvemonth. The other inhabitants of Macao are, Chinese, Negroes, and a
few English and Americans. The Chinese here are nearly all of the lower
orders, and, for the most part, are not over-scrupulous how they get
their living: in proof of which I may menti