238 DUTCH TREATY WITH MACASSAR book iii
by
the General and his Council, the King of Macassar equipped his galleys
and sent there eleven of the grandest nobles of his court with a
following of 700 men, and the chief of this embassy was the brother of
the late Prince Patinsaloa. They were instructed to present to the
General of Batavia 200 loaves (pains) x of gold to
redeem the royal fortress, and had orders to submit to all the
conditions which the Dutch proposed to them, provided that they did not
affect the law of Muhammad. The General received this embassy, which
was a great honour for him, and profiting by the opportunity, and the
good fortune of his arms, he himself prepared the terms of the
capitulation, which were signed by the ambassadors of Macassar and were
strictly observed. For immediately all the Portuguese left the country,
some passing to the Kingdoms of Siam and Cambodia,2 and the
remainder withdrawing to Macao and Goa. Macao, which was some years ago
regarded as one of the most famous and richest towns of the East, was
the principal object of the Dutch embassy to China, and as it was the
best port which the Portuguese then had in these regions, the design of
the Dutch was to ruin it completely. To-day this town, which is at the
22° of north latitude, in a small peninsula of the Province of Canton,3 which is a part of China, has lost much of its former renown.
The
Jesuit fathers and the Portuguese merchants were not recompensed by it
for the disgrace which they had experienced at Macassar, and they
sustained still another blow close to Goa. The Chief of the Dutch
factory at Vengurla, which is only 8 leagues from that town, heard of
the ill-success of Dutch affairs in China, and thought of a means to
avenge it. On his part he was not ignorant of the fact that the Jesuit
fathers of Goa and other places in India did a large trade in rough
diamonds which they sent to Europe, whither they carried them when
returning to Portugal. And in order to conceal this trade they used to
send one or two of their number
1 ' Loaves ' of gold. (See Appendix, vol. i. 331. 200 = £9,000.)
* Camboye in the original.
3 Xanton
in the original. Macao is near the mouth of the Canton river and
belongs to the Portuguese. The local, not the foreign, trade of Macao
is still very considerable, but largely in the nature of smuggling (Ency. Brit., xvii. 191).
