38 OPIUM : 



himself. Up to that time it was in fact a part of the trade in medicine ; not long 

 after it became a trade in a drug used medically and for smoking combined. 



28. 



Native Opium in The Native growth in Yunnan of the Opium Poppy can be traced to about 



Yunnan. 



the same time, or a little later. In the history of that province, published in 1736, 

 it is stated that Opium was then a common product of the department of Yung- 

 ch'ang-fu, in the western part of that province, where it borders on Burma. It may 

 have been introduced by the Mahommedans, who were fond of it themselves, as a 

 powerful medicine, or it may have been brought there from Burma and Thibet. It 

 is spoken of in the accounts we have of the trade of the sixteenth century as having 

 been introduced along with woven fabrics by traders coming from the coast of India. 

 Negapatam and Meliapur are mentioned as exporting both Opium and woven fabrics 

 to Pegu and Siam. The seeds of the Poppy may therefore have been taken by the 

 Burmese route to Yunnan. This Native Opium would be intended, not for Opium- 

 smoking, but to be used medically, as by a physician's prescription, or by the 

 contraction of a habit of daily consumption in a way like that of DE QUINCEY and 

 COLERIDGE. 



The Mahommedans have long been a power in the province of Ytinnan, and 

 their agency is to be suspected in this early cultivation of the Poppy in that part 

 of China. It was they that first learned from the Greeks the wonderful soothing 

 powers of this drug. They cultivated the Poppy in Arabia, then in Persia, then 

 in India. It was from them, in the MING dynasty, that the Chinese learned the 

 way to cultivate the Poppy and derive the Opium juice from the capsules. It was 

 they that carried on the trade in Opium, before the arrival of the Portuguese, 

 between the various sea-ports of the old Asiatic world. 



who cultivated It was probably by Mahommedan pilots that the ambassador of the MING 



the Poppy in 



Yunnan? ^ Emperor was conducted to the sea-ports of Arabia, Persia, and India in the voyage 

 we find on record. It was through information given by Mahommedans residing 

 as merchants at Canton that the Portuguese were known by the Chinese historians 



