520 Voyage of the Novara. 



or golden dung). Of these the Patna and Benares are 

 reckoned of finer quality, and consequently are more sought 

 after, than that imported from Malwa, but both descriptions 

 are preferred by the Chinese to the Turkish, and even to that 

 produced at home.* 



The custom of opium-smoking is of comparatively modern 

 introduction among the Chinese. It was about the com- 

 mencement of the 18th century, f that the practice of 

 mingling opium with tobacco as an antidote against tooth- 

 ache, headache, and pains in the body first began to prevail. 

 Chinese sailors and merchantmen, returning from the islands 

 of the Bomese Archipelago, had learned from the natives to 

 inhale it as an anaesthetic, which, dej^riving them of all 

 activity, brought the most delightful visions before their eyes. 

 It is unquestionably the prohibition of wine to the believers 

 in the Koran which first directed their attention to this nar- 

 cotic substance, which the Western Asiatics swallow in pills, 

 the Hindoos chew, and the Chinese smoke. In 1750, there were 

 imported into China from Turkey,' Persia, and Bengal, chiefly 

 by Portuguese merchants, some 200 to 250 chests according 

 to official return (of 140 lbs. each), ostensibly for medical use. 



* The quantity of home-grown opium, chiefly produced in the province of Yun-nan, 

 cannot be accurately ascertained, as the returns are not made at certain points ; but 

 the quantity must fall far short of the amount imported from India. 



t According to MacCuUoch's Commercial Dictionary, opium had been introduced 

 into China and India by the commencement of the 16th century by Mahometan mer- 

 chants, and it sounds like an apology when the learned and patriotic author, in 

 treating of the part taken by England in the much-to-be-lamented traffic in this 

 noxious drug, adds by way of palliation—" A century and a half before the English 

 had anythinij whatever to do with its cultivation." — (Latest edition, p. 939.) 



