Page:"Round the world." - Letters from Japan, China, India, and Egypt (IA roundworldletter00fogg 0).pdf/49

 “tools” and stores them away in his pocket for future use. In the meantime the can of tea has remained untasted, for the Chinese never drink while eating. And now he closes his repast with several bowls full of tea, of course, without milk or sugar, then he smokes his cigar or pipe with all the gusto inspired by a well filled stomach. These ships are very liberal in the food provided for the steerage, the quantity being unstinted, and the quality much superior to the average tare of the Chinese at home or in California; and yet the cost of boarding them for the thirty days trip is less than five dollars each.

In the centre of the forward deck I notice a temporary room of thick canvas, about eight fees square, on the door of which is an inscription in Chinese. Upon inquiry I am told with a grin on the face of my informant that it is the “Opium smoking room.” He opens the door and I glance inside. At first it seems dark, the only light being from a small lamp upon the floor, beside which is a box about half as large as a sardine can, which contains the drug prepared for use. There are three or four persons in the room, squatted on a floor or reclining on a bench in various stages of intoxication, One of them, with a silly smile on his cadaverous face, holds up a pipe and invites me to take a whiff. I decline end beat a hasty retreat, for the air of the place is so loaded with mephitic vapors that a few minutes stay would have overcome my senses. The pipe used for smoking opium is quite different from that ordinarily used for tobacco. It is of bamboo, as large in diameter as a flute, and two-thirds as long. About three inches from one end is a small bowl, in which the drag is placed, which is of the color and consistency of tar. A small quantity being put in the bowl, it is held in the lamp while from the other end of the pipe the fumes are drawn into the lungs and then slowly ejected through the nostrils. The intoxication, unlike that from alcohol, produces no howling maniacs, but lulls its victims to dreams of bliss from which he wakes to horrors worse than delirium tremens, which can only be assuaged by another indulgence and another descent into his infernal paradise. The habit once contracted, it is next to impossible to break off, and the miserable victim, possessed, as the Chinese say, by an “opium devil,” becomes imbecile in mind and thoroughly demoralized body and soul, is speedily carried to a worse than