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Updated: June 10, 2025
I rose from my hammock by daylight, shivering with cold; a praia, on account of the great radiation of heat in the night from the sand, being towards the dawn the coldest place that can be found in this climate. Cardozo and the men were already up watching the turtles.
At Macao, hundreds of fishing-boats, which supply the market both there and at Hongkong, assemble and anchor close together in orderly rows, both in the inner harbour as well as in the bay facing the Praia Grande, under strict supervision of the Portuguese authorities.
The view seen when crossing the hills behind Praia Grande was most beautiful; the colours were intense, and the prevailing tint a dark blue; the sky and the calm waters of the bay vied with each other in splendour. After passing through some cultivated country, we entered a forest which in the grandeur of all its parts could not be exceeded.
Our boat, fortunately, was excellently constructed, rising well towards the prow, so that with good steering we managed to head the billows as they arose, and escaped without shipping much water. We reached our igarite at sunset, and then made all speed to Curubaru, fifteen miles distant, to encamp for the night on the sands. We reached the praia at ten o'clock.
We loitered much on the way, and the day dawned whilst we were yet on the road, the sand at this early hour feeling quite cold to the naked feet. As soon as we were able to distinguish things, the surface of the praia was seen to be dotted with small black objects. These were newly- hatched Aiyussa turtles, which were making their way in an undeviating line to the water, at least a mile distant.
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.
We had the fiddler with us, and in the intervals between the wretched tunes which he played, the usual amusement of story-telling beguiled the time: tales of hair-breadth escapes from jaguar, alligator, and so forth. There were amongst us a father and son who had been the actors, the previous year, in an alligator adventure on the edge of the praia we had just left.
The canoes are then drawn up on the beach and thoroughly washed out, while the whole praia is covered with natives with the baskets on their backs in which they collect the eggs. The eggs are then cleansed from the grains of sand adhering to them, and emptied into the canoes, when they are trodden on by the children, much in the same way as grapes are mashed for wine-making.
We made several attempts; we tried running, having wrapped the cool leaves of Heliconiae round our feet, but in no way could we step forward many yards. There was no means of getting back to our friends before night, except going round the praia, a circuit of about four miles, and walking through the water or on the moist sand.
As the vessel rounds the cape and comes to anchor in the pretty crescent formed by the Praia Grande, flanked by terraced houses colored with minor tints of blue and yellow, you know instantly that this stranded Eastern rainbow is Monte Carlo no, the Oriental equivalent of the beauty-spot of Latin Europe.
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