Great commercial value of opium—Cultivation of the poppy—Exports of opium from India—What opium is—Preparation of the drug—Opinions on the English monopoly of the trade in it—Ingenious mode of smuggling opium—Efforts of Chinese Government to check its importation—Proclamation of the Viceroy Wang—Opinion of Li-Shi-Shen on the properties of opium—The worst form of opium smoking—Its introduction to Formosa by the Dutch—Depopulation of the island—Punishments inflicted on opium-smokers—Opinions of doctors on the effects of opium-eating or smoking—Chinese prisoners deprived of their usual pipe—The real danger to the poor of indulgence in opium—Evidence of Archibald Little—The Chinese and European pipe contrasted.

Opium has from the first been so important a factor in the history of Western intercourse with China, and indulgence in it is said to have had so much to do with the physical and mental inferiority of the modern Celestials, that it will be well to devote a chapter to the consideration of the nature of the drug and its effects.

The poppy (papaver somniferum), from which the narcotic is extracted, is grown in Persia and in China, but it is in India that it is most largely and successfully cultivated. The monopoly of producing it in her great Eastern dependency, and of selling it to the Chinese, has always been vigorously protected by England, and the destruction of that monopoly when it comes will be an immense loss to the revenue. Opium is, in fact, to the English what tobacco is to the French, and there is no doubt that British missionary effort has been greatly hampered by the dread of the authorities of any interference with their lucrative trade.

In the vast and fertile valley of the Ganges, the poppy has but to be sown to yield an extensive crop. The Patna and Benares districts are especially prolific, and at the time of efflorescence the air is laden with the heavy, enervating scent from the flowers. Nothing could be much more dreary and monotonous than the appearance of an Indian poppy plantation, when the soil is covered with the dried petals of the flower. Some few years ago the tax on the exported drug, both from Calcutta and from Bombay, amounted to considerably over six millions of pounds. The cultivators take their produce to the Government factories, where it is purchased from them, and then sent to the sea-port, so that any illicit consumption is rendered almost impossible. The comparatively small amount of opium consumed in India itself is taxed by the excise officers, and the bulk of the crop finds its way to China. It is only of late years that native opium has competed at all with Indian, but already it is rumoured that eventually it will drive the foreign imports away altogether. Szechuan opium is taking the place of Indian on the Yang-tse, and Little, in his Through the Yang-tse Gorges, describes vast poppy plantations in the districts watered by the great river. He bemoans the association of the English name "with the introduction of the useful yet pernicious drug," and points out that it was first brought to China from India by the Portuguese, adding that, in any case, the opium-pipe is most surely a Chinese invention, for it is unknown in any other land.

Opium in its first state is the dried juice of the capsules before they are ripe, and is gathered in the form of little globules of milky sap, of the colour of amber. In India the seed is sown early in November, and the capsules are ready for piercing about the beginning of February, when they are nearly as large as hen's eggs. The delicate operation of opening the poppy-heads for the exudation of the precious fluid is performed with an instrument about three inches long, consisting of four small knives bound together, the edges looking like the teeth of a comb. The labourers have each several of these instruments, which, when not in use, they carry carefully in a case. The day after the capsules have been pierced, the juice is collected by scraping it off into a kind of scoop, or small trowel, whence it is transferred to an earthen pot, hanging from the collector's side When full, these pots are carefully covered over and carried to the gatherer's home. The contents of the jar require the most careful attention for three or four weeks to ensure proper and equal drying. The juice is poured into a shallow plate or dish of brass, slightly tilted, to let any watery fluid, which would spoil the drug, drain off, and when the process is complete, the opium is carefully packed in jars of equal size, and taken to the Government factories. Here it is carefully examined, chemically tested, and weighed, to make sure that it has not been tampered with in any way; and, if all is well, it is placed in pots of the regulation size: the pots are ticketed and ranged in rows on shelves in a big room set apart for the purpose. The rest of the preparation for export is done in the Government laboratories, and the process is a long and delicate one. The united crops of vast districts are thrown into large tubs, where they are kneaded up together till they are of the right consistency. The material is then taken out, divided into equal portions, and placed on small tables, where it is manipulated, with the aid of copper bowls of a spherical shape, into balls of an equal weight, of about the size of a man's head. Some workmen become so skilful that they turn out a hundred of these balls a day. Poppy-leaves, reduced to powder, are used to prevent the opium from sticking together, and the balls are sprinkled with the powder, much as chemists used to sprinkle pills.

The opium thus prepared, is now placed in great earthenware pans, and carried to a drying-room, where the balls are ranged in rows of mathematical regularity. During the drying process each sphere is pierced every now and then with a long needle, to prevent the fermentation, which, but for the greatest vigilance, might set in. The pricking also sets free the gas which would rapidly deteriorate the value of the drug, prevents it from becoming musty, and drives off the swarms of insects attracted by the smell from it.

The cases in which the balls of opium are packed are made of wood from the mountains of Nepaul, which is brought to its destination in the form of huge rafts. These rafts come down the Ganges on sailing vessels, at the approach of which all other crafts have to make way. Calcutta is the port of export for Bengal, and the opium is shipped into steamers and taken to Hong-Kong or Shanghai.

As is well known, the British Government has been very severely criticized, not only by foreigners, but by English philanthropists, for maintaining the opium monopoly, and the entire cessation of the trade from India is earnestly advocated. Those who wish to maintain things as they are, urge that the control exercised by the authorities is a beneficent one, and that but for it opium would be cultivated throughout the whole of India, and its consumption increased a thousand-fold. Time, the great equalizer, will no doubt in the end keep up the monopoly without any definite action on the part of the English, for although nominally forbidden, the culture of the poppy is encouraged in China by the officials responsible for the enforcement of the law, and immense quantities of opium of native production is sold in the western provinces, for a much lower price than the imported drug.

The opium of Bengal is still preferred by critical smokers, but that of Smyrna is more largely used in medicine, for it contains a greater proportion of morphine, and is sent in large quantities to England, and to Belgium. The culture of the poppy has of late years also been tried in Africa, Australia, and even in parts of America, but so far the opium produced in those countries does not compete with the Asiatic to any perceptible degree.

As a very little opium represents a considerable money value, smuggling is of course practised on a very large scale, especially in China, where the ingenuity displayed is really extraordinary. All along the coast, and that coast is of immense extent, the illicit trade is briskly carried on. In the South the smuggled drug is brought in in very fleet vessels, of light tonnage, which easily evade the boats of the revenue officers. The steamers plying daily between the open ports of Hong-Kong and Canton do much to help the traffic, for the Celestials, who take passage on them, secrete the precious drug about their own persons in a manner most difficult to detect. Quantities of opium are also often hidden beneath sham planks, in the paddles of the wheels, in the pipes of the fire-engines, and even in the clocks on board. The struggle between the smugglers and the custom-house officers is never-ending, and the skill displayed in concealment on the one side and detection on the other is so nearly equal, that it is rare indeed for either to gain a decisive victory over the other.

There is something truly pathetic in the futile efforts made at various times by the Chinese Government to prevent the importation of opium into the country, and of the many viceroys of provinces to keep it out of the districts under their care. Here is a typical proclamation, issued by a certain Wang in the early days of the trade in the pernicious drug, which gives a very fair idea of what may be called native administrative literature:

"Wang, Imperial Viceroy, makes known the following: Advices have reached us to the effect that in the capital of Kwang-Tung and the neighbouring districts certain E-jen (barbarians from the West) are going about distributing to the people drugs in the form of pills made by fairies and evil genii. It is asserted that those who have absorbed these drugs sweat terribly all over their bodies to such an extent that they die.

"I order all civil and military authorities to seek out the distributors of these diabolical medicines, to arrest them, and to bring them to the Court of Justice, where I will punish them severely. Although there are no proofs that in my own district the E-jen have ventured to sell the pills in question, I have been assured that cakes injurious to health have been distributed to the people. Analyzed with the aid of white of egg, these cakes yielded a residue of maggots.... I immediately ordered the arrest of the presumptuous merchants, but they had already fled beyond my jurisdiction. Fifty strokes from a bamboo-rod on the soles of their feet would have been their punishment. The fact is, I am very much afraid that these wretches have gone to other provinces, there to carry on their trade and do further mischief.

"From another report I learn that every day certain E-jen throw deadly poisonous powders upon the roads; the rain does not destroy their potency for evil; when these powders are trodden under foot a thin, suffocating smoke rises up from them; there are some E-jen who carry this pernicious substance at the end of their fingers, and they have but to rub the head of any one they meet with it for that person to die, his body becoming covered with red spots.

"Have a care, therefore, not to allow yourselves to be duped; I give you notice that at the gates of the town in which I reside I have posted policemen who examine all strangers."

In 1578 the celebrated Chinese savant, Li-Shi-Shen, published his great book on the materials employed in medicine, to which he had devoted his whole life. In this book he gives the history of the poppy and its cultivation, dividing that history into three parts, the first relating to the early days when its properties were little known, that is to say, from the eighth to the eleventh century; the second to the time when the juice of the capsules was discovered to have medicinal properties and became used to alleviate affections of the stomach; and the third when opium was imported in solid form. Li-Shi-Shen justly remarks that it is in the capsule or seed-pod that the opium juice is secreted, and he recommends the use of that juice mixed with honey for certain maladies. He makes fun of a doctor who lived before his time, and had said that the juice of the poppy could kill as surely as a stroke from a sword, but dwells on the immense relief which those suffering from rheumatism and asthma had obtained from its use. This sage of the sixteenth century adds, that in Pekin opium pills are used to arouse sexual passion. There is nothing surprising in this assertion to those who know the Chinese and their fondness for such queer diet as swallows' nests, ginger, the fins of sharks, sea-urchins, etc., because they think they stimulate the senses. It must, however, be added in justice to the Celestials, that they are far less sensual than their neighbours, the Japanese, and this is no small praise.

Though Li-Shi-Shen was right in laughing at the doctor whose assertion is quoted above, the abuse of the newly-discovered drug of opium did cause a great many deaths, and in the seventeenth century many Imperial edicts were issued forbidding its use, but so deeply rooted had the love of it become, that these fulminations against it were powerless to prevent its importation. The mortality was doubled when the Chinese learnt to mix opium with Hashish, or the potent drug known in India as bhang, prepared from hemp.

The fatal knowledge was imparted to the Celestials in 1625 by some Batavians who had come to Formosa, then in the possession of the Dutch, who were engaged in building Fort Zealandia, near the present Taiwan. The pernicious compound is smoked through a pipe fixed on to a bamboo handle, and those who indulge in it are thrown into a state of delirium, which generally lasts for a whole night. The results in the island of Formosa were immediate and tragic, for all who had once enjoyed the voluptuous dreams induced by the double narcotic, conceived such a passion for the poison that no restrictive measures had any effect. The Dutch, alarmed at the rapid depopulation of the island, did their best to remedy the evil, but it was all of no use, the union of opium and Hashish was more devastating than an epidemic of cholera or small-pox would have been. If a native were condemned to the bastinado he would beg to be allowed to smoke his pipe whilst the punishment was being inflicted, and the blows from the bamboo fell all unheeded on his shoulders. According to some accounts it was this demoralization of the natives which led the Dutch to abandon Formosa, whilst others say they were driven out in 1866 by the Chinese. In any case it seems pretty certain that the worst form of opium smoking began during the Dutch occupation of Formosa, and was thence introduced to the mainland. It is consoling to know that Chinese historians attribute to the Dutch, not the English, the introduction of the most pernicious of all the various forms of opium smoking.

Inspired probably more by hatred of the foreigners who became enriched by the importation of the drug than by any feeling of humanity, the Chinese authorities continued for two whole centuries to inflict all manner of punishments on those who smoked opium, no matter in what form. The offenders were fined, thrown into prison, compelled to wear the cangue, or heavy wooden collar, fitting closely round the neck and preventing the victim from obtaining any rest, or received a varying number of strokes from the bamboo on the mouth or on the soles of the feet. Now, however, all is changed, for the tax imposed on opium brings wealth to the coffers of the Government, and although smoking is still nominally forbidden, it is in reality encouraged throughout the length and breadth of the land.

Opinion is very much divided as to the effect of opium on those who indulge in it. When I was in Indo-China I was only able to consult English doctors on the subject, and it was impossible not to feel that they were necessarily prejudiced in favour of the drug, bearing in mind the great revenues reaped by their Government from its importation. I was assured by one of them that its use in moderation was perfectly harmless, and that an old confirmed smoker if suddenly deprived of it, does not suffer any ill effects. This, by the way, is a very important point. My informants cited cases of ardent consumers of opium being thrown into prison, where such a thing as a pipe was not to be had; yet instead of suffering from the deprivation, the victims retained their usual health, and were not nearly so much affected as sailors would be who could not have the tobacco to which they are accustomed, or drunkards cut off from every beverage but pure water. It will be remembered that after the suppression of the Commune in France in 1871, many of the insurgents sent to Brest died at once from the sudden loss of the stimulants they had become accustomed to. More hardened or more philosophical, who shall say which? the Chinese prisoners deprived of their best-beloved pastime resign themselves without a murmur, though there is no doubt that they suffer frightfully from the terrible conditions in the gaols, coming out, if they come out alive, mere skeletons. A "Celestial" place of detention is indeed a Gehenna of horror and misery. It is only fair to add, however, that a case occurred of a man, who before he was sent to prison had never missed his pipe for thirty years, yet he gained three pounds in weight during the first three weeks of his detention.

Amongst the poorer classes in China it is really the time and money wasted on the drug which are of more importance to the bread-winner than the bad effect on his health. At the best of times the wages earned by a Chinese labourer are extremely low, and when he takes to smoking, his wife and children suffer much, as do those of drunkards in Europe. Archibald Little, who knows the Celestials as well perhaps as any other Englishman, says that during his "forty years' stay in the country and extensive intercourse with every class, he has met with few natives seriously injured by the drug. To the well-nourished Chinaman," he adds, "his evening pipes are more a pastime, a means of passing the time pleasantly in a state of placid inactivity dear to the Oriental, while the merchant conducts many of his best bargains over the pipe, much as negotiations are often conducted over a bottle of wine at home.... It is when," adds this keen observer, "a Chinese mandarin succumbs to the opium-pipe and spends most of his time on the opium-couch that the mischief is serious, for rapacity and mis-government go on unchecked,"[5] it being all but impossible to get such a man removed from his post. He has, say the natives, the 'Yin,' their name for the passionate craving for the drug, corresponding with what is called dipsomania by European doctors, and there is no hope for him; he will indulge his passion till he dies. Not unjustly have many medical men called attention to the indulgence in wine and brandy of the European residents in China, especially in Hong-Kong, and suggested that the missionaries should begin their reforms at home, and before inveighing against Chinese vices they should endeavour to win converts to sobriety amongst their own fellow-countrymen.

In discussing the evil effects of opium-smoking, the very great value of the drug as a medicine is liable to be forgotten, yet the lives of thousands have been saved by its use under proper control. It has absolutely no rival in its power of giving needful sleep in illness and in relieving pain, whilst in many diseases its effect is of the greatest possible advantage to the patient.

Dr. Ayres of Hong-Kong relates several experiments he made in his own person to test the truth of the theory that the poisonous qualities of opium evaporate when it is smoked, but remain active when it is eaten. He began by absorbing a very small quantity per day till he could take as much as half-an-ounce, and says that he experienced sensations so intensely agreeable that he realized what the suffering of deprivation must be when the habit of opium-eating is once confirmed. He then tried smoking a pipe of the prepared drug every day, without feeling any ill effects whatever; there was, he declares, absolutely no difference in his pulse or in his temperature. It was exactly the same with several Europeans whom he persuaded to follow his example. "I counted the throbs of their pulse, I took their temperature, and there was absolutely nothing abnormal about either, although I had made them smoke twelve pipes each." This does but prove that the effects of opium are different with different constitutions, and that there are some who can take it even in large quantities with impunity; but for all that the horrors of the so-called black smoke, and of the opium dens of China can hardly be exaggerated, even the Celestials themselves admitting that the effects of the drug are injurious to health, and warp the better nature of those who indulge in it to excess; but, as already remarked, its price is still so high that only the wealthy can afford it in quantities likely to be hurtful. It is as difficult for a Chinese workman to get opium as it would be for a French peasant to buy champagne, or an English apprentice to indulge in port-wine.

Moreover, it is even now the exception for rich Celestials to yield themselves body and soul to the temptation. One opium-smoker goes to call on another, and the two indulge in a friendly pipe together as they chat about the weather, or the state of trade, or perhaps arrange a marriage for a son or a daughter; but the host does not expect to see his guest fall asleep and roll on the ground like a pig, any more than a European now-a-days expects his visitor to succumb to drink, and slip under the table as was so common an occurrence at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The ordinary opium-smoker does not light his pipe to induce sleep, but just to enable him to forget his troubles for a time, and no De Quincey or Sylvestre de Sacy is needed to prove that a man in rags may indulge in happy dreams of prosperity without leaving some cheap and dingy tavern. Still we cannot fail to contrast the ugly Chinese apparatus with all its paraphernalia, including the horribly smelling lamp needed to keep it alight, with the simple European pipe, so easily filled to begin with, and so readily replenished. The lover of opium seeks to be alone; he has no desire for the company of even his dearest friend in his den; but the smoker of the comparatively innocent weed delights in gathering his comrades about him, and there is nothing in the wide world more provocative of good fellowship than the fumes of tobacco.