I now recall vividly the beautiful poppy fields at Assiut, Esneh and Kenneh, by the banks of the Nile, in which such subtle powers were sleeping potent for ill or good as employed by man for deadening his faculties or soothing pain in reasonable measure. These flowers were of the reddish kind. In China they have the white, red and purple varieties, which, as you gaze on them, seem to set the fields aglow with fire and attract your gaze as if you were enchained to the spot by an unseen power. The seeds are sown in November and December, in rows which are eighteen inches apart, and four-fifths of the opium used in China is the home-product, though it was not so formerly. In March or April the poppy flowers according to the climate, the soil, and the location. The opium is garnered in April or May, and prepared for the market. The Chinese merchant values most of all the Shense drug, while the Ynnan and the Szechuen drugs take next rank. The opium is generally made into flat cakes and wrapped up in folds of white paper. It is said that it was introduced into China in the reign of Taitsu, between the years A.D. 1280 and 1295; but it is worthy of note that up to the year 1736 it was imported only in small quantities and employed simply for its medicinal properties, as a cure for diarrhoea, dysentery, and fevers, hemorrhage and other ills. It was in the year 1757 that the monopoly of the cultivation of the poppy in India passed into the hands of the East India Company through the victory of Lord Clive over the Great Mogul of Bengal at Plassey; and from this time the importation of the drug into China became a matter of great profit financially. In 1773 the whole quantity imported was only two hundred chests. In 1776 it had increased to one thousand chests, while in 1790 it leaped up to four thousand and fifty-four chests. The Chinese Emperor, Keaking, becoming alarmed at its growing use and its pernicious effect when eaten or smoked, forbade its importation, and passed laws punishing persons who made use of it otherwise than medicinally, and the extreme penalty was sometimes transportation, and sometimes death. Yet the trade increased, and in the decade between 1820 and 1830 the importation was as high as sixteen thousand, eight hundred and seventy-seven chests. The evil became so great that in 1839 a royal proclamation was put forth threatening English opium ships with confiscation if they did not keep out of Chinese waters. This was not heeded, and then Lin, the Chinese Commissioner, gave orders to destroy twenty thousand, two hundred and ninety-one chests of opium, each containing 149-1/3 pounds, the valuation of which was $10,000,000. Still the work of smuggling went on and the result was what is known as the Opium War, which was ended in 1842 by the treaty of Nanking. China was forced by Great Britain to pay $21,000,000 indemnity, to cede in perpetuity to England the city of Hong Kong, and to give free access to British ships entering