This was in the Straits Settlements, where the deadly effects of opium
are less prominent. But no language of mine can exaggerate the evil, and
if I would be honest, I cannot describe it as anything but China's most
awful curse. It cannot be compared to alcohol, because its grip is more
speedy and more deadly. It is more deadly than arsenic, because by
arsenic the suicide dies at once, while the opium victim suffers untold
agonies and horrors and dies by inches. It is all very well for the men
who know nothing about the effect of opium to do all the talking about
the harmlessness of this pernicious drug; but they should come through
this once fair land of Yuen-nan and see everywhere--not in isolated
districts, but everywhere--the ravaging effects in the poverty and
dwarfed constitutions of the people before they advocate the continuance
of the opium trade. I have seen men transformed to beasts through its
use; I have seen more suicides from the effect of opium since I have
been in China than from any other cause in the course of my life. As I
write I have around me painfullest evidence of the crudest ravishings of
opium among a people who have fallen victims to the craving.
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