Although there are supposed to be but forty-five licensed opium shops in Singapore town, there are upwards of eighty; wherever there are Chinese, there may also be found the Papan Mera. Certain trades are congregated together—you have carpenters in one street, blacksmiths in another, gold and silver smiths in a third, and so on. Amongst some trades, the habit of opium-smoking is more common than in others, the principal consumers will be found amongst carpenters, blacksmiths, barbers, huxsters, coolies, boatmen, gambier planters, and gardeners. Full eighty-five per cent. of the persons engaged in these callings are devoted to the drug. Shoemakers, tailors, and bakers, are generally less addicted to the habit; amongst the two first-named, not more than twenty per cent. are smokers. Wherever you have carpenters, blacksmiths, &c., in abundance, there will you have opium shops in abundance also. In many streets there are six of these shops. In one street there are twelve. In Canton Street there are eight houses, and two of them are licensed for opium. At Hong-Kong and at Canton, the same thing occurs. Certain streets are devoted to certain trades, and certain trades devoted to opium. M. Abbé Huc communicates a few additional facts concerning opium in China. At present this country purchases annually of the English, opium to the amount of seven millions sterling; the traffic is contraband, but it is carried on along the whole coast of the Empire, and especially in the neighbourhood of the five ports which have been opened to Europeans. Large fine vessels, armed like ships of war, serve as depots to the English merchants, and the trade is protected, not only by the English Government, but also by the mandarins of the Chinese Empire. The law which forbids the smoking of opium under pain of death, has, indeed, never been repealed; but everybody smokes away quite at his ease notwithstanding. Pipes, lamps, and all the apparatus are sold publicly in every town, and the mandarins themselves are the first to violate the law, and give this bad example to the people, even in the courts of justice. During the whole of the Abbé’s long journey through China, he met with but one tribunal where opium was not smoked openly and with impunity. The Chinese prepare and smoke their opium lying down, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other, saying that this is the most favourable position; and the smokers of distinction do not give themselves all the trouble of the operation, but have their pipes prepared for them.