The " Opium Farm ''"'at Singapore. 155 



wliicli the 2)lant is carefully scratched. Each plant is thus 

 tapped for three consecutive days, the operation beginning 

 with the first warm beams of the morning sun ; the milky 

 sap is scraped off in the cool of 'the next morning, and on the 

 fourth morning each plant is again tried as to whether it still 

 exudes sap, but usually it proves to have been exhausted. 

 The juice as scraped off in its coagulated form, is put into a 

 cask along wdth linseed oil, in order not to get too quickly dry, 

 and then is made by hand-kneading into round flat cakes, of 

 about foul' pounds' weight, and about five inches in diameter, 

 which, enveloped in poppy and tobacco leaves, are spread 

 out to dry in earthen dishes, till ready for purposes of com- 

 merce. Ill this stage the opirnn is packed in boxes of ten 

 cakes or about 40 lbs,"and thus passes from the hands of the 

 grower or the speculator at certain fixed prices into those of 

 the agents of the East India Company. The very anxious 

 and precarious cultivation of the poppy must prove far less 

 remunerative to the proprietor of the land than the much 

 easier task of raising tobacco or sugar-cane, and it is only the 

 long-established but most impoverishing system of payments 

 in advance, pursued by the agents of the East India Company, 

 that keeps the Hindoos engaged in opium cultivation.* 



At the opium farm in Singapore we saw this same coagu- 

 lated juice, as obtained from the poppy, converted into opium 



* The net produce of an acre of land grown with poppy amounts to about 20 or 30 

 rupees, producing about 30 lbs of opium. The oil extracted from the seed-vessels 

 of the plant gives a return of from 2 to 3 rupees per acre. 



