has a population of perhaps eighty thousand persons, and
practically all these are Chinese. There are, of course, a few score of
civil and judicial functionaries springing from the mother-country; and,
as in all places where Europeans have long lived in friendly association
with Orientals, the Eurasian class is strikingly numerous. In no court
on the Tagus are the laws of Portugal construed with more tenacity and
precision than in Macao's chambers of justice; and the flag of Portugal
floats over the homes of hundreds of loyal subjects who know only in a
hazy manner where Portugal really is--they are rich Chinese and others
evading the Chinese tax collector, or escaping burdensome laws, and for
many years these crafty Mongols have made a sort of political Gretna
Green of Macao. Certain influential Chinamen carrying on business in
Canton or other southern communities live in almost regal splendor in
Macao, and when the minions of the Chinese government attempt to hale
them before a tribunal of law, or compel them to share the expense of
carrying on the administration of a province, they exclaim in Chinese,
"Oh, no; I'm a subject of the King of Portugal"--and prove it. The great
sugar planter of the Hawaiian Islands, Ah Fong, whose Eurasian daughters
were beautiful and accomplished enough to find splendid American and
European husbands, was a subject of the Portuguese crown, strange to
say. His domicile on the Praia Grande is one of Macao's proudest
mansions.

[Illustration: FRONTIER GATE BETWEEN CHINA PROPER AND THE PORTUGUESE
COLONY]

The colony of Macao is scarcely more important than one of Anthony
Hope's imaginary kingdoms, but for the fact that it is on the map, for
the area of Portugal's foothold is not more than two or three miles in
length, and a half-mile to a mile in width; it is merely the rocky
promontory of the tip end of the island of Heung Shan. A wall of masonry
with artistic gateway separates the dominion of Portugal from the great
Chinese empire--on one side of the portal the law of the Emperor of
China is absolute, and on the other the rule of the monarch of Portugal
is sacred. In various ways the place and its people remind strongly
of a comic-opera setting--but the officer there serving his far-away
sovereign discourses with serious countenance of Goa, and Delagoa Bay
and Macao as important colonial possessions. Until Hong Kong under the
British began to rise as a port and base of commercial distrib