The tea was placed ready to my hand, and I was left alone, the curtain falling as the servant retired. I then smoked my first pipe, and found the flavour of it detestably nasty. I now stretched myself in the couch, laid my head upon the hard glazed roll of cardboard, which did duty as a pillow, and closed my eyes. After a few minutes of anything but pleasant meditation, I suddenly felt very unwell, and looked about me distractedly. Seeing a porthole close to me, I put my head through it, hoping that the fresh air would cool my burning forehead, but the sight of the black water of the harbour, and the dreary sound of its surging up and down, made me worse, so I quickly drew back and lay down again, determined to persevere. At the end of a quarter of an hour I had smoked two more pipes, and then I issued from my cabin with a very vague idea about my own sensations, but feeling like a man suddenly overtaken by giddiness, or seized with violent sea-sickness. [Sidenote: A HAPPY DREAM] My Yankee friend hastened to my assistance, but before he saw me off the boat, he took me to have a look at the stout Chinaman with whom I had had a discussion about the Bible. He was alone in a smoking-den, just like the one I had used. His face was ghastly pale, his eyes were widely distended, and he was gazing at the waves with an expression of terror, whilst his features were bathed in perspiration.... He was wrapt in a dream--a happy dream, no doubt--though his looks belied it, for surely so many Asiatics would not smoke the opium which brings the dreams if they were not happy! [Illustration: FIG. 41.--A CHINESE JUNK.] CHAPTER IX Great commercial value of opium--Cultivation of the poppy--Exports of opium from India--What opium is--Preparation of the drug--Opinions on the English monopoly of the trade in it--Ingenious mode of smuggling opium--Efforts of Chinese Government to check its importation--Proclamation of the Viceroy Wang--Opinion of Li-Shi-Shen on the properties of opium--The worst form of opium smoking--Its introduction to Formosa by the Dutch--Depopulation of the island--Punishments inflicted on opium-smokers--Opinions of doctors on the effects of opium-eating or smoking--Chinese prisoners deprived of their usual pipe--The real danger to the poor of indulgence in opium--Evidence of Archibald Little--The Chinese and European pipe contrasted. Opium has from the first been so important a factor in the history of Western intercourse with China, and indulgence in it is said to have had so much to do with the physical and mental inferiority of the modern Celestials, that it will be well to devote a chapter to the consideration of the nature of the drug and its effects. [Sidenote: CULTIVATION OF THE POPPY]