open up negotiations with the officials on the coast near Huéh. Every Annamese officer appealed to refused to take any message. Leaving a letter addressed to the sovereign of Annam deposited on the beach, he at last received a message by subordinate officials, declining all negotiation and refusing admittance to Huéh. Sir John gave up any further attempt to thwart French influence in Cochin-China and returned to Hongkong (October 30, 1847) disappointed.
Sir John's relations with the neighbouring Colony of Macao were peaceful but by no means of the happiest sort. As the fortunes of the Colony of Hongkong were visibly declining, the Macao Government thought there was a chance of retrieving the mistakes of the past and bringing back to Macao the discontented free traders of Hongkong as well as the American, Dutch, French and Parsee merchants established at Canton. Accordingly a decree was obtained at Lisbon (November 20, 1845) which, though far from being a complete free trade measure, reduced the harbour dues and custom house exactions to the lowest possible minimum and virtually made trade at Macao less cumbersome and more propitious than it was at Hongkong. The measure failed to re-establish the former fortunes of Macao: it came too late for that. But it contributed its quota towards a further diminution of the commerce of Hongkong and a considerable increase of the discontent felt by Hongkong merchants. An assault that was committed on Sir John Davis (April 11, 1845), whilst on a visit to Macao, was without any political significance, but indicative of that turbulent character of the Macao Chinese which was so fatally to manifest itself against the next Governor of Macao (Senhor Amaral) who, within a year after his arrival (April 18, 1846), ordering a road to be cut through the Campo and interfering thereby with Chinese graves, had subsequently to pay with his life for this disregard of Chinese religious superstition. In March, 1847, the prospects of Macao were as discouraging as those of Hongkong and a cession of Macao to France was talked of, but the movement, if it ever had any reality, came to nothing.
