Page:China and the Manchus.djvu/89

Rh finally obliged in the general interest to retire. He went to Macao, a small peninsula to the extreme south-west of the Kuangtung province, famous as the residence of the poet Camoens, and there he died a month later. Macao was first occupied by the Portuguese trading with China in 1557; though there is a story that in 1517 certain Portuguese landed there under pretence of drying some tribute presents to the Emperor, which had been damaged in a storm, and proceeded to fortify their encampment, whereupon the local officials built a wall across the peninsula, shutting off further access to the mainland. It also appears that, in 1566, Macao was actually ceded to the Portuguese on condition of payment of an annual sum to China, which payment ceased after trouble between the two countries in 1849.

The next few years were employed by the successors of Lord Napier in endeavours, often wrongly directed, to establish working, if not harmonious, relations with the Chinese authorities; but no satisfactory point was reached, for the simple reason that recent events had completely confirmed the officials and people in their old views as to the relative status of the barbarians and themselves.

It is worth noticing here that Russia, with her conterminous and ever-advancing frontier, has always been regarded somewhat differently from the oversea