Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/268

262 instance is not far to seek. Simply stated, it lies in the circumstance that they have found in their intercourse with white men that the white man is a scoundrel. Other races have learned the same lesson through experience disastrous just in proportion to the value of their territory or property in the eyes of the rapacious Caucasian, and that China has thus far escaped complete dismemberment is due solely to the mutual jealousy of the powers which have long had that ambition and design. Her losses of domain have not been great, but she has been made to suffer, nevertheless, as no other civilized nation since the wreck of the empire of the Incas by Spain. Her first contact with Europeans in modern times began early in the sixteenth century, and from the beginning it was of a nature to fully warrant the sentiment with which she still regards them. Successively, the French, Portuguese, Spaniards and Dutch descended upon her coasts, ravaged and destroyed towns, and massacred their inhabitants. The Portuguese captured Ningpo, and held it until the populace, enraged by their acts of cruelty and oppression, rose and drove them out with heavy loss of men and ships. Later, they seized and fortified the peninsula of Macao, and after repeated efforts to expel them the Chinese government granted the privilege of occupation, conditional upon the payment of 500 taels annual ground-rent. In the treaty it was specifically stipulated that China should retain sovereignty over the territory. This treaty, however, was so manipulated by the Portuguese translator that according to the text of the copy which went to Lisbon all rights over Macao were ceded to Portugal, China being allowed merely to maintain a consulate. When at length the fraud became known at Peking the imperial government protested, but was forced, in order to avoid a war with the invader, to formally cede the peninsula, which remains Portuguese territory. The Crown of Portugal draws a small revenue from farming out the right to operate establishments for playing fan-tan, a game prohibited by the laws of China.

In 1854 Macao became the seat of the infamous coolie traffic, which for a quarter of a century paled the worst horrors of African slavery. This trade was originated by the English to supply cheap labor to the colonists of British Guiana. In the early years of the enterprise the coolies were induced to emigrate on legitimate contract for seven years' service at the rate of something over four dollars a month, with food, clothing and shelter provided by the planters. After the independence of Peru she entered the traffic to secure workmen for her mines and for the guano pits of the Chincha Islands, and Cuba followed her example to provide for her plantations. As the demand for the coolies increased the means employed in procuring them became more and more unscrupulous. Labor agents infested the Chinese ports, the natives were decoyed by fraudulent representations, systematic kidnapping was inaugurated, armed junks were employed to raid the coasts for captives.