If there is no opium, where do the people so easily
secure it in endeavors to take their lives upon the slightest
provocation? Last year the price of opium here on the streets, although
its sale was "illegal," was over three tsien (about nine-pence) the
Chinese ounce of prepared opium. At the present time, in the same city,
many men would be willing to do a deal for any quantity you like for
less than two tsien. Cases of smuggling are frequent. One gets
accustomed to hear of large quantities being smuggled through in most
cunning ways, and it all goes to show that the _people_ of Yuen-nan are
not, as some of China's enlightened statesmen and some of the ranting
faddists of England and America would have us believe, falling over one
another in their zeal to free the province from the drug.
The other day some men passed through several towns, on the way to the
capital, carrying three coffins. In the first was a corpse, the other
two were packed with opium. Being suspected at Yuen-nan-fu, the first
coffin was opened, and the carriers, making as much row as they could
because their coffin had been burst open, secured a fair "squeeze" to
hold their tongues, and the second and third coffins were passed
unexamined.
Pages:
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146