The Ophim Question 193 



described that the Tuiigs had to expend 4000 taels. Our 

 host was a fine specimen of a Western Chinaman of the 

 farming class — a tall, well-built man, of quiet dignified 

 bearing, as great a contrast in appearance to the trading 

 Chinaman as is the typical British farmer to the London 

 cit. The farm buildings, substantially built and of two 

 stories, occupied three sides of a triangle, the open court- 

 yard overlooking a splendidly fertile valley reaching down 

 to the river and watered by a noisy brook, utilized, as usual, 

 to irrigate the paddy-fields which occupied the more open 

 ground. Above rose bamboo groves and pine forests to 

 the mountain's top. The poppy, which here forms the 

 winter crop of the bean and maize lands, was just ripe for 

 gathering, and a close examination of the capsules showed 

 them to be scored with the four-bladed knife, from the 

 wounds made by which the opium was now slowly exuding, 

 so much so that, walking through the fields, my white 

 clothes were all stained with the brown juice. I had many 

 discussions on the subject of opium cultivation, the enormous 

 extent of which in the western provinces strikes every 

 traveller with amazement. It is distressing to find the 

 English name everywhere associated with the forcible intro- 

 duction of this beneficent and at the same time pernicious 

 drug. Of course it is useless to tell Chinamen that opium 

 must have been used in China long before the old East 

 India Company introduced it. The Portuguese were the 

 first to bring opium from India to sell in China, and it is 

 certain' that they would not have brought it, had they not 

 found a ready sale for it. The opium-pipe is most surely 

 a Chinese invention, for it is absolutely unknown in any 

 other land. As for its pernicious effects, I look upon the 

 money and time wasted upon it as far worse than its direct 

 effects on health. In China, where the wages of a working 



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