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ACROSS THE HEART OF CHINA.
1906, the same trade in that year amounted to only 30,000 taels.[1] In parts of Ssŭch'uan I found the people jubilant at the prospect of a campaign against the drug from India. But why? Because they were anxious to fight and stamp out the evil? Because they were yearning to come to the rescue of "the desolate homes, the weeping mothers, the fathers crying, 'O! Absalom, my son, my son,' the degraded wives, the ragged children, the starving households, the fiendish men, the wretched women, the poor suffering sons and daughters of sorrow"?[2] Certainly
- ↑ Cf. Report of the Blackburn Commercial Mission, Consul F. S. A. Bourne's section, ch. iv., p. 89: "The Lin-ngan merchants pay for their purchases by consignments of opium or of tin.... Their capacity to purchase foreign goods is directly measured by the value of opium and tin they can export. A common way of carrying out this exchange of products is to send opium overland to Wu-chow for sale, to take payment at Wu-chow in bills on Hong Kong to buy Lancashire cottons and yarn to be imported here, chiefly viâ Tongking."
- ↑ The Rev. H. C. Du Bose. I have no wish to underestimate the evils of opium-smoking, but I am compelled to point out that absurdly exaggerated language is frequently used as to the effects of the habit indulged in in moderation. My coolies in Ssŭch'uan carried loads of 133 lb. each, and marched from twenty to thirty miles
