CHINA. 



385 



Account of the Quantity and Value of (lie different Sorts of INDIAN OPIUM imported into China during tine Nine Years 



ending u~ith 1835-36. 



The use of opium, for the purpose of exhilarat- 

 ing the spirits, has long been known in Turkey 

 and Syria, but in those countries the poisonous 

 drug is either taken as a pill or chewed after the 

 manner of tobacco. In China, however, the mode 

 of using it commonly adopted is that of smoking, 

 although there are some few who use it in much 

 the same way as it is used in Turkey and Syria. 

 The following is the manner in which it is pre- 

 pared : The opium is imported into China in a 

 crude state, the packages of it having attained a 

 certain degree of consistency ; those packages are 

 dissolved in hot water, and the extract thus ob- 

 tained is dried, and smoked through a pipe. Its 

 effects, when taken in this way, are precisely ana- 

 logous to those of swallowing it in its crude state. 

 Opium shops are to be found in all the streets of 

 China, just as public-houses and gin palaces are to 

 be seen here, and the wretched victims of this de- 

 grading vice, fleeced of their all, are to be seen 

 hanging their heads at the doors of these shops, 

 and in many cases, shut out from their dwellings 

 by angry relatives or ruthless creditors, are left to 

 die unpitied and despised in the streets. A native 

 artist, named Sunqua, residing in China-street, Can- 

 ton, has executed some paintings on rice paper, 

 which, forming a series, six in number, and which, 

 in fact, are an exact counterpart of Hogarth's 

 famous Rake's Progress. The design of these 

 pictures is to show the progress of the opium 

 smoker from health and prosperity to misery and 

 degradation. The first of these pictures represents 

 a you g man, the son of a gentleman of fortune, 

 richly attired, and in all the freshness and vigour 

 of youth. On his right is a chest of treasure, gold 

 and silver; and on his left a personal attendant, 

 constantly employed in preparing the crude article 

 purchased and brought to the house for his use. 

 In the second of these pictures he is reclining on a 

 superb sofa, with a pipe in his mouth, surrounded 

 by courtesans, two of whom are young, in the char- 

 acter of musicians. His money now flies without 

 any regard to its amount. The third of these pic- 

 tures represents him, after a short period of indul- 

 gence, with a countenance sallow and haggard, with 

 h igh shoulders and naked teeth, and moping on a 

 very ordinary couch, with his pipe and other smok- 

 ing apparatus lying by his side. At this moment 

 his wives, or his wife and a concubine, come in ; 

 the first, finding the chest emptied of its treasure, 

 stands frowning with astonishment, whilst the 

 second gazes with wonder at what she sees spread 

 on the couch. In number four his houses and 

 lands are all gone, his couch is exchanged for 

 rough boards and a ragged mattress, his shoes are 

 off his feet, and his face is half awry, as he sits 

 bending forward and breathing with great difficulty. 



The fifth represents him scraping together a few 

 copper cash, with which he hurries to one of the 

 smoking houses to buy a little of the scrapings 

 from the pipe of another smoker, to allay his insa- 

 tiable cravings. In the last of these pictures he 

 appears as a confirmed sot, sitting upon a bamboo 

 chair, continually swallowing the faeces of the 

 drug, so foul that tea is required to wash them 

 down, his wife and child seated near him, and, by 

 winding skeins of silk from bamboo reels, earning 

 for themselves and him the means of dragging out 

 a miserable existence. These pictures are to be 

 considered, not as the result of a singular notion in 

 the mind of an isolated individual, but as indica- 

 tions of the general sense of a large class of the 

 community in reference to this degrading vice. 



The extent to which this pernicious drug has 

 been introduced into China by our own countrymen 

 during the last twenty-one years has been such as 

 to show a ten-fold increase. The mode of cultivat- 

 ing it in India is thus described. The ryot, or im- 

 mediate cultivator of the soil, selects a piece of 

 ground, which, by repeated ploughings, he makes 

 completely fine, removing all the weeds and grass. 

 The field is then divided into squares, with dykes 

 running in all directions, lengthways and cross- 

 ways. A pit or sort of well is dug at one end of 

 the field, from which, by a leathern bucket, water 

 is raised into one of the principal dykes, and in this 

 way is conveyed into every part of the field, us re- 

 quired. The seed is sown in November, and the 

 juice is collected in February and March, usually 

 during a period of about six weeks. As soon as 

 the plants spring up, the weeding and watering 

 commence, and are continued till the poppies come 

 to maturity. Perpendicular cuts or scratches are 

 then made in the rind of the bulbous head, from 

 which the juice exudes, which is daily collected, 

 and delivered to the local officers. The East In- 

 dian government annually enters into an engage- 

 ment with the ryots or cultivators, through an in- 

 termediate agency, constructed in the following 

 manner: There is first a collector, who is a Eu- 

 ropean ; secondly, there are gomastahs, a superior 

 class of men, both in education and caste; thirdly, 

 sudder mattu, a respectable class of landholders ; 

 fourthly, village mattu, the principal villagers, a 

 little superior to the ryots ; and fifthly, the ryots, 

 the chief labourers in the cultivation of the pop- 

 pies. The engagement entered into with govern- 

 ment is this : when the poppy is ripe, and immedi- 

 ately before the period of extracting the juice, the 

 gomastah and his establishment make a circuit of 

 the country, and form, by guess, a probable esti- 

 mate of the produce of each field. lie then makes 

 the ryot enter into an engagement to deliver the 

 quantity estimated, and as much more as the field 

 2 H 



