1 879.] Opium Smoking among the Celestials . 347 
clothing or drugs or groceries, but what we find a notable 
proportion of the business to consist in the sale of opium. 
We pass the shop of the merchant, and while one assistant 
is counting out the gold for a bill of exchange on the Flowery 
Kingdom, we see another weighing carefully a small portion 
of the much coveted drug. The jeweller, surrounded by the 
precious bracelets of nephrite and phrenite, lays aside for 
the moment the curious golden circlet he is filing, to catch 
up the balance and poise upon the pan the little horn cup a 
moment, and again return to his employment. The grocer, 
surrounded by the many dainties of Mongolian gastronomy, 
stands under the rows of varnished fowls, balance in hand, 
dispensing the drug with the most imperturbable gravity and 
solemnity. As we stand by the half-open doorway on one 
of those beautiful summer evenings so common to Pacific 
climes, a young celestial enters the shop to return in a 
moment laden with his store of dreamy forgetfulness, the 
absorption of which transports him, in imagination, to his 
native land, where riding in a gorgeous palanquin, with 
maidens to fan him and coolies to fly at his slightest wish, 
he passes into his dwelling by Kin-Sha-Kiang, or the river 
of the golden sands, where his wife, with the feet of a mouse, 
brings his tea in golden cups, and so he passes into the arms 
of Morpheus (or Morphia’s meconic embrace), his couch 
covered with scarlet and silken curtains with fringes of 
golden strands, only to awake finding himself lying coiled up 
on a hard board shelf covered with matting, his head upon a 
block ; for now transported by the magic lamp of a private 
detedtive we are in the classic preempts of an opium den. 
To reach it we have passed through many dark, subter- 
ranean alleys, through courts of filth and squalor and 
wretchedness to any other than Mongolian eyes. On either 
side of the room, which is about sixteen feet square, are 
accommodations for twenty or more smokers — shelves rising 
in tiers like the bunks of a steamer’s cabin. In the centre 
is a small table covered with the shells, bowls, cups, lamps 
and other paraphernalia of a first-class opium den, sustained 
by liberal patronage. It was early evening, scarcely mid- 
night, and at our right inclined a strong, sleek, almond-eyed 
native of a foreign land, well known to our guide as one of the 
most inveterate smokers of the city. Immediately in front 
of him was a small saucer filled with lamp oil, and inverted 
over it was a tumbler in the bottom of which (or the apex 
as it was placed) a small hole was drilled, through which 
protruded a piece of wick — this being lighted constituted 
the lamp. By its side lay an oyster-shell containing a 
