SLAVES OF THE OPIUM PIPE.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XVII, Issue 1112, 21 January 1885, Page 3

SLAVES OF THE OPIUM PIPE.

THE SIGHTS TO BE WITNESSED IS A

SMOKING- DEN IN HONG-KONG.

The smoker lies curled up, with his head resting on a bamboo or earthenware pillow about sin high. Near him stands an opium lamp, the flame of which is protected by a glass- shade low enough for the flame to project over the top of the shade. The smoker takes a wire and dips it into a little box containing prepared opium. A small quantity adheres to the point of the wire, which is then held over the flame of the lamp until the heat has swollen it to about ten times its original size. This is rolled over and over on the flat side of a clay bowl, the opium all the time adhering to the wire. When it has been rolled to a soft solid mass it is again applied to the lamp, and this alternate roasting and rolling is kept up for at least ten minutes, by which time it is in the shape of a pill, and ready for use. The aperture in the pipe is so small that it can only receive the smallest quantity, and the most careful manipulation is needed to transfer the tiny ball of opium from the wire to the bowl of the pipe. The point of the wire is inserted into the hole of the pipe and worked round and round till the soft opium forms into a conicalshaped ring round the wire. By twirling the wire the ring is gradually detached from it, leaving a hole through the opium about as large as the whole of the pipe bowl, with which it communicates. The pipe is now ready, and the bowl is held over the lamp so that the opium comes in contact with the flame. A spluttering noise ensues as the smoker sucks at his pipe. After each successive draw, he ejects from nose and mouth a volume of smoke, the very smell of which is enough to turn a horse's stomach. By the end of the fourth or fifth whiff the pipe is empty. The smoker now scoops out another dose of opium, rolls it into a pill, repeats the operation with the same patience as before, and smokes away until the pipe falls from his hand and he is lost in dreamland. One thing is very certain, that if tobacco smoking were only half the trouble, tobacconists would very soon have to shut up shop.

After a little while we turned a corner and passed into a back room. Here were the same scenes, the same filth, the same withered faces, and the same spluttering o£ opium pipes. These seemed to be secret smokers who had come here to avoid detection, where there seemed every facility to evade the search of their friends. We were not surprised to find in this room mere youths, who, judging from their silken robes, were sons of wealthy families, and who were here beginning a career which must end in ruin and disgrace. On entering the den we were surrounded by half-a-dozen emaciated looking objects who implored us to give them medicines to cure them. Every foreigner in China is believed to be a god, able to kill and make alive. He has a great reputation as a medicine man. "We were fortunately able to direct the poor fellows to the missionary hospital, where they would get weaned from the drug. One man told us that he had smoked for thirty years ; that his physical energies had clean gone, and he was fast becoming a wreck. He spent three-fourths of his family earnings at the den, and the craving was becoming so intense that he feared before long all his money would go in opium. It is very common example where the mother of a young family will toil early and late to support an opium-smoking husband and father. A beginner has only to pay two or three visits to the den, and the place has a wonderful fascination over him. Three weeks' smoking, at a couple of hours per day, and the man, left to himself, is bound a slave to the pipe while he lives, held down by chains stronger than iron, from which only death can release him.