Malacca (from the "Archivo Pittoresco" magazine, 1857)

Ruins of the only door that remains from the ancient city of Malacca -- Engraving by Coelho Junior

      It dawned a fair morning of January. The Aurea Chersoneso ["Golden Peninsula", the ancient Latin name for the Gulf of Malacca], glittered with the first rays of the sun, seemed to salute with joy the Portuguese maritime flag, that quacked on the top of our vessel, as if remembering still the awestriking deeds of our sixteenth century grandparents. On the contrary, melancholia leaned down on the visages of all the crewmen, regarding the English flag, that unpinned on the walls of Malacca.

      Approaving on the anchorage, we casted iron facing the city, and some of the officers and passengers transport themselves right-away onto land.

      The port of Malacca on January of the year of our Lord of 1852 it gave not the slightest idea o' that old commercial emporium from other eras; not even it seemed a modern English colony: on its berth not a single merchant vessel found itself.

      It wondered us we just jumped over that land of glorious rememberances, to hear speak Portuguese (very adultered, it is true) on all the folk that to us did near... Two centuries of Dutch and British domain were not sufficient to make forget to the Malays the idiom of the great Affonso de Albuquerque!

      Rising to a carriage, we said to the Mohamedans who, on foot, drove the horse: To the palace of the governor. But, just arrived to the residence of the first colonial officer, we modified the idea of palace, drank in Sincapore [sic]; because instead of that sumptuous dwelling, we found a modest housing; but in pay of that, it appeared to us in the person ofthe governor the agreeable exception of an Englishman without spleen, and even of very nice manners.

      This good man had the delicacy of offering himself for our ciceroni; and, despite of asking him that he did not bother, insisted on to us going to show the city ruins, unique objects worthy of the attention

of the traveller, mainly the Portuguese traveller. These ruins are what remains of grandiouse and beautiful on dat crumbled-down emporium!

      Who still feels throbbing on the chest a heart of a Portuguese, that he avaliate our sensations a' that hour! In each stone it seemed to read the names of Diogo Lopes de Sequeira, Ferdinand Magellans, Affonso de Albuquerque, Fernao Lopes d'Andradre, Antonio de Abreu, Leoniz Pereira, Gonssalo Pereira Marramaque, Luiz de Mello da Silva, Mem Lopes Carrasco, and so many other heroes that, on land and on the sea, were the terror of Malays and Javans.

      Afterwards of visiting the Catholic temple of the invocation of Saint John, work of the Portuguese, and that only had one priest, native of Goa, we went to see the remains of the walls of the city, and the only door that still remains standing, from where we took out the sketch that accompanies these lines.

      Crestfallen, silent, eager, we went back to the quays; and returning on board, we unfurled the sails, saying a nostalgic goodbye to that glorious theatre of he achievements of our ancestors.

F. [J. Jélix Nogueira?)

In Archivo Pittoresco, 1st Year, no. 22, Nov. 1857