A LONDON OPIUM DEN.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3217, 21 October 1881, Page 4

A LONDON OPIUM DEN.

(Pally Telegraph.) I suppose a powerful, able bodied African raving drunk is about as ugly an illustration of the depths of degradation to which intoxicating liquids can reduce a human creature as the most zealous Lawsonite could desire to mate use of. lam sure of this, however, that Sambo at his worst, and when his open eye-balls, rolling in frenzy, gleam like the jewel to which they aire likened when it is exposed to the sun or to fire, and when his protruding lips shrink back and look as hard as ridges of black bone, hedging his double row of vicious teeth, even then he is not such a repulsivelooking being as the yellow-skinned opium smoker after his third or fourth dranV when he is propped by tho considera',landlord against the wall with legs no more available than those of _ a rag doll, there to iemain until consciousness ?!owly returns to him, when he will take a swig at "the water jug to moisten his parched mouth, and go at the pipe again. The ugly spectacle, however, is not commonly on view. To behold it one must first gain admittance to a smoke-house. Unlike a public-houso no sign distinguishes it, and its whereabouts is known only to the initiated. But the habitual opium smoker knows where to snr" it, and thither he resorts to snatch a couplo of hasty pipes if he has pressing business in band, or to make a night of it—two, trree Bights and days as well for that matter—in congenial company. I had not much trouble in discovering two smoking-house" in the lroality, the master of one beinft „jtaOhvnaman but an Irishman. I told him what I yequired, and he suggested no obstacles. I was as welcome as anybody else to come to ais house and to smoke a pipe as well if I had a mind to it. Evening wa3 his busiest time. A few regular customers who liver! in distant parts of London and had honoured him with their patronage for years, came for a quiet pipe in hi 3 best room in the day-time, but it was not until about dusk that <-X, 3 common sort came, and then ho was sometimes so full as to be obliged to turn people away. At dusk that same evening I was again in the neighborhood. The house I was in quest of was situated in what notoriously is the worst part of tho locality —up a court in a street the majority of the inhabitants of which are probably known to the police. Had T been in any doubt as to which was the particular court where my opium master lived, I should have been speedily set right, for at that very moment there came shuffling up the street two gaunt objects, Lascars seemingly, with their flimsy blue serge jackets buttoned close, and each with a woollen comforter round his throat, though the evening was close and sultry. They made straight for the court, and were in such a hurry that they reached the smokehouse and disappeared in at the door before I could overtake them. The door was ajar, and as I had made an appointment with the landlord, I walked in without scruple, and at the end of a passage there found a room where opium smoking was going at full blast. It was not a large apartment— ".ot more than fifteen or sixteen feet square possibly ; but a hasty glance around revealed to me thirteen individuals present, exclusive of the master of tbe house and an attendant. A dingy paraffin lamp hanging against the wall revealed the pretty picture. At least half the floor was covered with a large mattrass, and on three sides of the square were placed bolsters as dirty as the walls themselves; and huddled nose and knees with their heads on the bolsters, two on a side, reclined six smokersjin various stages of intoxication with the opium they were inhaling. There were two long forms in the room, ',nd on one of them sat five customers, waiting their turn (the remaining two making up the thirteen were lying on the floor by the wall motionless as men asleep or dead), and being in no particular hurry to rest my head on a bolsler I took a back seat, but in full view of the mattrass. Tho opium master's assistant — a ragged youth without coat or waistcoat, and who seemed to have stirred his hair to the wildest possible disorder in an opium dream—was concocting something in a pipkin that Btood on the hob of the fire-grate when one of the impatient waiters and watchers drew his attention to a smoker whose pipe stem had dropped from his lips, and who lay helplepß and hideous, with his mouth ajar, and with a failing phosphorescent light in his halfopen eyes. Well used to the job, the attendant hauled him off the mattrass and la!". him with the other two by the wall, while the first man on the form sprang forward with alacrity t<i take his place, and with a face of blissful expectation resigned himself to the following ceremony. Unbuttoning his jacket, and divesting himself of his cap, he lay down on his side, with one hand under his head, as though composing himself to sleep, while the presiding genius got a pipe ready for him. With a bodkin he took from the saucer a portion of opium seemingly no larger than a moderate-sized pea, and holding it on the point of the implement twiddled it in the flame of the lamp, causing it to emit a sickening odour. When the morsel was sufficiently fried he placed it in the pipe bowl, and thrusting the pipe stem into the eager mouth of the smoker, applied a light to it, which the other sucked. Sucked is the word. Anything like blowing a cloud, such as happens when one ignites the fragrant birdseye in the bowl of a briar or meershaum, or oven a clean and honest clay, was out of the question. The Lascar'B lips closed over the blunt stem as though they were glued to it, and one only judged. that he was sucking by the drawing in of his cheeks. I observed the pipe narrowly, and could discern only the thinnest thread of pale blue smoke rising now and again from its bowl. What fumes there were the smoker swallowed, as his eyes blinked lazily, and each moment more resembled that of a pig whose last gorge of barley meal was a treat to dwell on ere it fell asleep. I am unable to say exactly how long it took to consume the smouldering opium, but certainly not more than eight or nine minutes. At the end of that time a gurgling in the pipe stem announcer! that the charge was burnt out, and, for the time completely drunk and incapable, the smoker was bundled off the mattrass to make room for the next customer. I don't know how long the two that were on the floor when I entered had been lying there, but they now began to rouse, shivering and shrinking in their clothes as though they felt cold, and staring at each other and about the room in a bemused way, and as though their brain was still "fuddled " with the powerful narcotic. Nor did they appear to recover completely until the tattered waiter handed them each a small cigarette of ordinary tobacco. After smoking it out they rose from the floor, Bhook themselves, and took a seat on the form, ready for another " drunk" when it came to their turn. They did not talk with each other during the long interval of waiting, or appear in the least inclined to be companionable, but for the most part sat with their eyes closed and their arms folded, as though anxious to shut out everything that might break the thred of their cogitation on pipes past and in prospective.