An illuminated sign, “First-class Gambling House,” drew my attention. Gambling, next to loafing and the manufacture of opium, is the principal occupation of the youngest and oldest inhabitants. Macao is the Oriental Monte Carlo. Gambling here is backed by the government which gets back a certain per cent of the earnings which it invests in hospitals, asylums and cheap lodgings for the people who have been beaten at the game. At this gambling-hell one could play at the big table downstairs, or drop into the game by lowering his money in a small basket from the balcony above. Tired of the game, the player recuperates his wasted energies here by eating bird-nest soup and shark-fins, or drinking Portuguese wines. If he is sleepy, he may take the opium-pipe train of thought to the Flowery Land where every-day is Sunday. At a “song-parlor” some Chinese dolls amused us with their squeaky voices and knife-scraping music. It sadly recalled my visit to a Hongkong house of pleasure whose almond-eyed inmates illustrated Confucius’ remark that “women had no souls,” and the Chinese philosophy which attributes death and evil to Yin, the female principle in Nature. Their artificially whitened and rouged faces were ghastly, and their flower-and-jewel-bedecked hair glued down to the skull was anything but attractive to an Occidental eye. Their lips were red like the dawn of day, their complexions like congealed ointment, and their betel-nut-stained teeth like black watermelon seeds. They unfurled painted fans, sipped tea, nibbled sweetmeats, puffed at opium-pipes, and looked quite flowery in their blue collars, purple tunics and bright green trousers. I wonder if the men, whom they were entertaining, remembered the Chinese proverb, “There is no such poison in the green snake’s mouth or in the hornet’s sting as in a woman’s heart.” After visiting next day a firecracker factory, temples, joss-houses, and a tobacco plant where little children and old women were at work sorting the leaves, I was conducted to Macao’s notorious opium factory. I entered a low-ceiling room where men were stripped to their waists like blacksmiths at the forge. They picked up the crude opium, shaped like a cocoanut shell, scooped out the chocolate-looking substance, threw it into a kind of brass wash-basin under which roared the fire, until it steamed and blubbered like a pot of hot mush or molasses. They darted here and there like imps with these pans. Then the liquid was poured in porcelain boxes of various sizes. The whole place seemed like a Devil’s smithyshop where chains were being forged for lost souls. The odor was peculiar and penetrating. I must have absorbed some of the dope, for I felt dizzy and was glad to get outside in the fresh air.