"We will drop the political bearings of opium, and look at the way the drug is made. The plants grow broadcast in the fields, and the laborers thin them out just as cotton-plants are thinned in America. When they are of the proper age the capsule or bulb is gashed with a knife having several parallel blades; this work must be done very skilfully, so as to prevent the knife going through the skin of the capsule, which would cause the total loss of the juice. The cutting is done in the afternoon; the next morning the juice that has exuded is scraped off with an iron spoon and collected into an earthen jar, and the operation is repeated five or six times in succession at intervals of two or three days. [Illustration: SHOP OF AN OPIUM MERCHANT.] "The juice when collected is like thick cream; a dark liquid called _pasewa_ is drained from it and carefully kept, while the more solid mass settles to the bottom of the jar, and is slowly dried in the shade. When it has reached the consistency of freshly-kneaded dough it is formed into balls, and thickly covered on the outside with a mass composed of pasewa and the leaves and stalks of the poppy plant, which have been dried and pounded to powder. These balls or cakes are about six inches in diameter, and weigh a little less than five pounds; they are dried in the sun, and afterward in the shade, till the outside is like a thick crust of bread, when they are packed in the chests, and are ready for market." [Illustration: COOLIES COOKING.] Soon after daylight our friends looked out on the landscape through which the train was moving. They saw a flat country, with villages of mud-huts scattered here and there, and with broad fields, where men were at work clearing the ground for the next season's crop. The Doctor said they were in the midst of the opium country, and the fields around them would be waving with poppies a few months later. In some places the villages were close to the track of the railway, and as it was near the hour of breakfast a good many of the natives were engaged in cooking their morning meal. The apparatus they used was exceedingly simple, as it comprised an earthen pot, in which a tiny fire was kindled, and a shallow pan for steaming the rice, which is the universal article of food. The low price of labor in India can be readily understood when we bear in mind the simple process of cooking, and the monotony of the bill of fare. From the beginning to the end of the year the only food of the native is boiled or steamed rice, and it is a remarkable fact that he never wearies of it.