158 Voyage of the Novara. 



The taste of the half-fluid juice of the poppy is sweetish and 

 oily, but the odour of the chandu when heated, which one of 

 the work-men addicted to smoking insisted on our regarding as 

 one of the most valuable of perfumes, is so disagreeable as 

 almost to cause nausea. We saw numbers of smokers, 

 athwart the filthy gossamer-like curtains, utterly stuj^efied, 

 and lying carelessly stretched out on the hard bedsteads, the 

 pipe fallen out of their hands, and the lamp on the table in 

 front of their couch extinguished. They, however, did not 

 want the curtain for the purpose of preventing their beipg 

 disturbed in the luxurious enjoyment of their beatific dreams; 

 for they continued in a state resembling death itself, from 

 which hardly anything could possibly rouse them so long as 

 the effects of the poisonous drug lasted. Others of the 

 smokers were so affected by it as to have utterly lost their 

 senses, and seemed on the whole entirely indifferent to all 

 that was passing around them. One of the workmen, who 

 was in a high state of excitement, and was uncommonly 

 talkative, informed us however that he had to smoke about 

 one shilling's worth of opium ere he could feel its effect, that 

 there was nothing more annoying or insupportable than mere 

 partial stupefaction, when one had no more money where- 

 with to buy opium so as to be able to get into a proper state 

 of somnolence. The entire system at such times gets into a 

 frightful state of irritation ; there is severe headache, a sensa- 

 tion of pressure on the stomach, nausea, in a word all the ill- 



