CHINA.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VI, Issue 508, 15 June 1850, Page 3

CHINA.

The late Governor Amaral. — The month of January has passed over without any political event to mark it beyond the surrender, at last, by the Chinese government of the head and hand of the late Governor of Macao. These sacred remains were delivered over on the 16th ult., having been brought down from Canton in a dirty salt boat, without a single officer or functionary of any kind representing the Chinese government, or any ceremonial whatever, to mark the rank or respect due to the memory of the deceased ! — a kindred insult to that studiously put, by the same authorities, upon the bodies of our own murdered countrymen, in December, 1847, which were sent from Wangchukee to the Canton Factories in leper boats, paddled down by putrid wretches in the last stage of that revolting disease. The venerable remains of Governor Amaral were, as might have been expected, so far gone as to be barely distinguishable, still it is a satisfaction to Le able to state that their identity was established both directly and circumstantially; the line of excision upon the head and the vertebrae exactly coincided ; the ieatures were entirely dried up and wasted, the brow and the hair alone contributed to the identity. On the remains being lowered into the Portuguese barge the garrison flags were lowered half mast, and the forts commenced- firing .minute guns.* ~ On landing, a procession was formed, consisting of the principal officers of government, the priesthood of all grades, the troops, the resident foreigners, and the great balk of the Portuguese population, which escorted the relics to government house, where the body has been lying waiting for them since the 22nd August last. Thus, after a lapse of nearly five months since its first acknowledged possession of them, has this barbarous government so far complied with outraged decency as to deliver over to his family and to his country the perished remains of its illustrious victim, but the imperishable monument of its own perfidy and coward'y revenge. No day has yet been fixed for the funeral, and we have not learnt whether it has been finally determined to send the remains to Europe or inter them at Macao. To borrow the words of a Macao correspondent, narrating the delivery — " Such is the last act but one of this melancholy tragedy ; and looking at past experience, what have we to expect, but that after the last prayer has been prayed, and the list mass has been sung, the curtain will fall upon the catastrophe never to rite again." The settlement continues quiet and sufficiently protected, and the assassin commissioner is for the present baulked of his prey ; still the prospects of Macao are highly precarious, aud unless some bold step be taken, and promptly too, by its present government, it is impossible that it can continue a Portuguese possession. Within the very last month there has been a revolt of more than one-half the garrison for arrears of pay, which was with difficulty suppressed. Without trade or local resources, Macao cannot continue under the Portuguese flag, and nothing but one bold stroke can save it to the house of firaganza. i At Cantou all is quiet and trade improving. Our dates from Shanhae are to the 19th instant ; all was well there, and the markets stationary.