Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/57

 9»s. vi. JULY 2i, HMO.] NOTES AND QUERIES. scribed in scientific books, the whole process of opium smoking remains a mystery to the average Englishman. People imagine that an opium-pipe is like a tooacco-pipe. In a curiosity shop near Temple Bar I recently saw little Japanese tobacco-pipes offered for sale under the name of opium-pipes. Opium is smoked in the recumbent position, because daring the entire smoke the opium pill, held against the bowl of the pipe on the point of a knitting-needle, must be cooked over the flame of an opium-lamp. The whole thing is most original and fascinating, all the more so because nere, in the heart of London, not a soul speaks English. These opium dens have been several times more or less (generally less) successfully portrayed in works of fiction, from ' Edwin Drood' to Sherlock Holmes, but always with sole reference to smoking, and not to any other aspect of Chinese life in Li nil-house. No novelist has done for the London Chinatown what the author of the ' Cat and Cherub ' did for New York. No novelist has divined what eccentric local co_lour might be brought into a story along with those quaint gaming tables, covered with Canton matting, and always surrounded by a polyglot crowd, which are as characteristic of the opium dens as the pipe itself. The games played are card games. Chinese cards are very various in design, and I have been at some pains to classify them (for full de- tails, see 8th S. xi. 76, 214). The first favourites are the so-called "Couamander-in-Chief Cards" (three suits of ten cards each). Mr. Stewart Culin says that by the American Chinese these cards are regarded as a powerful charm to drive away evil spirits, but are seldom if ever used for the purpose of play. In London the reverse is the case; I have seldom or never entered an opium den without finding a game in progress. Considerable sums of money are won and lost at these Chinese card games. A sailor returning from a cruise of three years, with his accumulated wages at the rate of 42. a month, has been known to lose them all. To bring luck to the losing gamester, the god whose shrine stands in the corner of the room must be propitiated; before his altar eternal incense burns, and it is always covered with vases of artificial flowers, and with offerings of food in the shape of cups of tea and plates of mixed biscuits. The quarter has doubtless been passed through by many a pedestrian without any suspicion that he was within the boundaries of a Chinatown, smaller, it is true, than the Chinatown of San Francisco, but in every essential particular as marked, If there is one thing more than another which would be- tray the Oriental quality of the place to the outsider it is, I may not say the local colour, but rather the. local smell. I can detect in it traces of tobacco (the Manila cigars affected by my Chinese friends), opium (both in pre- paration for the pipe and in process of smoking), "joss-sticks" (burning before the family deities), and the mingled odours of a favourite dish called "chop-sui" (which, being interpreted, means mixed bits, and gives a fair idea of its composition), and of various Chinese medicines stocked in glazed earthen- ware bottles. The opium shops are really Chinese boarding - houses, with a floating population drawn from the steamers plying between China and the port of London : Cantonese firemen, boatswains, and seamen ; stewards from Ningpo; and cooks from the island of Hainan. Those whose ideas of such places are solely derived from reading novels will find far less of the sensational, and far more of the milk of human kindness, in the daily life of their inmates, than would seem credible to any one who does not reflect that, after all, these men are simply honest shop- keepers, and their customers honest sailors. The former are naturally of a superior class in comparison with the latter, and often cherish hobbies involving the possession of cultivated tastes: thus one will be found read- ing a Chinese history, in some sixty volumes or so; a second dearly loves his Chinese singing lark, and has refused an offer of 6l. for it, the bird being so attached to him that he is accustomed to open its cage in Victoria Park, and give it liberty for a time, sure that he can call it back whenever he pleases; others, again, are musical, playing one or another Chinese stringed instrument—the hu-kin, for example, or two-stringed fiddle, in which the bow passes between the strings. There are pretty children running about, some of the Chinese having taken to them- selves English wives, and these marriages are to all appearance happy. The youngsters prattle Chinese as well as English, and when a little concert can be got up they will join their baby voices in the words of a Chinese song. JAMES PLATT, Jun. MATTHEW WEBB. (Concluded from p. 22.) THE map at the British Museum is a print of the Admiralty Chart VII., No. 1895. This chart has been superseded, and is not now obtainable, for as soon as a new chart is issued the Admiralty destroy the old one. [t was presented—by J. Q. Chambers (?), who