Page:A wandering student in the Far East vol.1 - Zetland.djvu/150

102 with most valuable information in reply to my many inquiries concerning the province. No regulations, he said, had as yet been put into force for reducing the area of land under the poppy in accordance with the imperial opium edict which had been issued in September, "but," he added, "the people have been exhorted to give up the cultivation of the poppy." It usually requires something more than exhortation to persuade a man to give up the means of supplying himself with his daily bread. An acre of wheat, according to Sir Alexander Hosie, will give an average yield of grain of the value of £4, 5s. 6d., whereas a similar area will produce raw dry opium of the value of £5, 16s. 8d. Query, would polite exhortation be sufficient to persuade the owner of 50 acres to forego a sum of £77, 18s. 4d. a-year—£77, 18s. 4d. being equivalent to 779,000 cash? His answer to my question as to when the much-talked-of Ch'ung-k'ing—Ch'êngtu railway would be begun, was happy if not absolutely illuminating,—"I do not know," he said, "whether it will be next year." I felt that I could safely have enlightened him upon the