ON THE HABITUAL USE OF OPIUM 
6 
The three first qualities are emptied from their jars into large 
tanks, in which they are kept until the supply of the season has been 
obtained. The opium is then removed and exposed to the air on 
shallow wooden frames, until it becomes of the consistency of from 69 
to 79, when it is given to the cake maker, who guesses to a drachm 
the exact weight, and envelopes the opium in its covering of petals 5 
cemented by a covering of quality No. 4. The balls are then weigh-* 
ed and stored, to undergo a thorough ventilation and drying. For¬ 
merly the covering of the balls was composed of the leaves of To¬ 
bacco ; but the late Mr* Flemming introduced the practise of using 
the petals of the poppy, which was such an improvement that the 
Court of Directors presented him with 50,000 Rupees. The balls, 
forty in number, are packed in a mango wood case, which consists of 
two stories with twenty pigeon holes in each, lined with lath and sur¬ 
rounded by the dried leaves of the poppy. Sometimes these balls are 
so soft as to burst their skins, and much of the liquid Opium running 
out is lost. In 1S23 many of the chests of Patna lost 5 catties from 
this cause, and to this day we have the same thing continuing to oc¬ 
cur. Patna chests are covered with Bullock hides, Benares with 
gunnies. 
CHAPTER 11. 
THE FIRST USE OF OPIUM IN THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO 
AND CHINA. 
We have already seen that Opium as a medicine has been used 
from the earliest ages; hut when it was first resorted to us a luxury 
it is impossible to state, tho it is not at all improbable that this was 
coeval with its employment in medicine, for how often do we find, 
that from having been first administered as a sedative for pain, it has 
been Continued, until it has itself taken the place of the evil. Such 
must have happened from the earliest ages, as it happens daily in the 
present; but as a national vice it was not known until the spread of 
Islamism, when, by the tenets of the Prophet, wine and fermented 
liquors being prohibited, it came in their stead, along with the bang 
or hashsliash, coffee and tobacco. 
