Page:A La California.djvu/355

perfumes lavished on the altars of the high-class temples. In an alcove on one side of the room is a raised couch, spread with matting, and provided with' braided split-cane pillows, for the accommodation of the opium smokers, two of whom are now stretched out at full length thereon, gazing into vacancy with fixed, staring eyes, unconscious of all that is passing around them, and wrapped in the wild hallucinations called into existence by the fumes of the deadly drug, which is sooner or later to utterly prostrate them, bodily and mentally, and send them, after awful sufferings, to fill untimely graves. Did not Christian England wage a savage war upon Heathen China, that the opium trade should not be broken up? Why then talk of abolishing it, now that it has become the curse which is destroying the whole Mongolian race? We are not missionaries, and did not come here to preach. Round a table, a party of coolies are engaged in gambling, for "copper cash," with dominoes, playing the game very rapidly, and with consummate skill, though in a different manner from that known by the name with us. On another table we see a strange collection of nondescript effigies, made of highly-colored paper and slips of pliant cane. One resembles in outline a goat, but has the head of an alligator, and the figure astride its back is that of a man with a cock's head on his shoulders. The next figure has the body of a lion, a horse's head, and a fish's tail, and is ridden by a man with the head of an ox, and a sword in his hand. A Chinaman, who appears to understand English, volunteers to explain these mysteries to us. We