The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1904-02-21

GAMING TABLES OF MACAO.
Portuguese City Has N Rival to the
Casino mt Monte Carlo.

Casino mt Monte Carlo.
From Travel.
Quaint and picturesque is the old
Portuguese city of Macao, which.
though decaying and almost mort
bund settlement from the commercial
point of view, is, says Mr.. Eutace
Reynolds-Ball, the seat of a highly
lucrative gambling industry, over
score of licensed gambling houses nav
ing tax in the aggregate of some
$4,000 a year to the government.
Macao has been, and is still, chiefly
celebrated for its gaming tables, which
are crowded by Chinese and Portu-
guese and from Saturday to Monday
by Britishers from Hong Kong. who
prefer having a fiutter at the game.
If it can be so called, of fan tan in
stead of going to the service at the
Hong Kong cathedral. The gambling
hells are in the Chinese quarter. and
are by no means attractive as re-
CARDS exterior or interior. They are
of course, licensed by the Portuguese
thorities-indeed, the taxes imposed
on these gambling dens constitute one
of the principal sources of revenue of
the city.
These gambling houses are usually
OF one story only, and on the ground
floor (Which you enter at once from
the street, there being no hall or ante
ROOM you find an ill-lighted and ill
ventilated room, some 30 feet by so feet,
the sole furniture of which is a table
about feet square and feet high
Before the croupier, usually the pro-
prietor is a small pile of cash. In
the middle of the table is a large slab
of'zinc, divided into four sections, num-
bered /, 2, 3, 4. The punters stake
their stakes on one of the sections, but
the richer players are careful not to
indicate the amount of the stake, and
wrap their money up in rice paper,
though even the most skilled croupier
would find it difficult with so many
eyes watching his manipulation of the
cash to add to his legitimate profits
by cheating.
The ground floor room is crowded
with lower class natives and a sprink-
ling of foreigners, but in the balconies
which surround the gambling hell are
collected the members of the Chinese
"haute monde" mandarins and other
functionaries, who can join in the game
unperceived by the common herd be-
low,
They pass their stakes to the croupier
in small reed baskets, which are low
cred and raised by a cord. When all
the stakes have been laid down and the
zinc tablet by this time is quite con-
cealed by little heaps of coins and little
pilllike pellets which contain the stakes
of the more cautious gamblers, suspi-
cious of the dexterity of the croupiers
in manipulating the cash-the croupier
calls out the Chinese equivalent of
'Messieurs, lie jeu est fait" He indi-
Gates this as well by covering his own
heap of cash with a brass bowl and be-
gins slowly and deliberately to draw out
four cash at time, with a chop-stick
in each hand. His movements are pur-
posely deliberate, so as to impress the
punters with the fact that there is no
deception" Ultimately the heap is re-
duced 10 one, two or three cash, or
nothing remains. The winning stakes
are at once paid in proportion of three
times the stakes Qess the bankers
commission of 10 per cent? to those
who have backed the winning numbers
1, 2, 3 or 4, the latter number only win
ming when no cash remains in the heap
after division.