There was one marked difference in the cities of China as we saw them in our two visits, and this was the change that had taken place in the matter of opium-smoking. Opium-smoking in 1907 was such a common vice that you could see men smoking it at the doors of their houses. In 1909 opium-smoking hid itself, and those that smoked, smoked secretly, or at any rate less ostentatiously. I doubt whether so great an alteration has taken place in any country, certainly not of late years. Each race has its peculiar vice; in fact, we may go further than that, we may say that it is a remarkable fact that the great bulk of mankind insists on taking some form of poison; in fact, it is only a minute minority which wholly abstains from this practice. The poisons used by mankind have different effects and have a different degree of toxic power, but the reason they are used is because in some way they stimulate or soothe the nervous system. Opium, alcohol, tobacco, tea, coffee, hashish, are examples of this widespread habit of humanity; but these different drugs have the most different effects on the welfare of man. Some seem to be wholly {108} innocuous if not beneficial, and others seem to be absolutely pernicious and to do nothing but evil; and further than that, one may say that a different preparation of the same drug or a different way of taking it produces differing results. A still more curious thing is that though all mankind is agreed in taking some poison, there is a marked, racial tendency to accept one particular poison and to detest others, and at times it seems as if the habit of taking one was sufficient to prevent another having any attraction. As we went to China we passed through the Suez Canal, and heard what a curse hashish was in Egypt, and how the Egyptian Government had endeavoured to secure total prohibition of the use of this obnoxious drug, a course which was impossible owing to the great amount of smuggling that was facilitated by the wide deserts that surround Egypt. When we arrived at Saigon (we were travelling by the French mail) we first came in contact with the terrible vice of the Chinese. A French lady was pointed out to us by a doctor, and he asked us to observe the odd glassy look of her eyes, the intense suavity of her manner and the contempt which she evinced for truth, and he told us that these were all symptoms of the vice of opium-smoking that she had contracted from association with the Annamites. The French for some mysterious reason seem more prone to acquire this vice than do our own countrymen, for though in 1907 it was rife in South China, {109} no one ever suggested that any English smoked opium at Hong-Kong.