The three first qualities are emptied from their jars into large tanks, in which they are kept until the supply of the season has been obtained. The opium is then removed and exposed to the air on shallow wooden frames, until it becomes of the consistency of from 69 to 70, when it is given to the cake maker, who guesses to a drachm the exact weight, and envelopes the opium in its covering of petals, cemented by a covering of quality No. 4. The balls are then weighed and stored, to undergo a thorough ventilation and drying. Formerly the covering of the balls was composed of the leaves of Tobacco; but the late Mr. Flemming introduced the practise of using the petals of the poppy, which was such an improvement that the Court of Directors presented him with 50,000 Rupees. The balls, forty in number, are packed in a mango wood case, which consists of two stories with twenty pigeon holes in each, lined with lath and surrounded by the dried leaves of the poppy. Sometimes these balls are so soft as to burst their skins, and much of the liquid Opium running out is lost. In 1823 many of the chests of Patna lost 5 catties from this cause, and to this day we have the same thing continuing to occur. Patna chests are covered with Bullock hides, Benares with gunnies.
CHAPTER II.
THE FIRST USE OF OPIUM IN THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO AND CHINA.
We have already seen that Opium as a medicine has been used from the earliest ages; but when it was first resorted to us a luxury it is impossible to state, tho it is not at all improbable that this was coeval with its employment in medicine, for how often do we find, that from having been first administered as a sedative for pain, it has been continued, until it has itself taken the place of the evil. Such must have happened from the earliest ages, as it happens daily in the present; but as a national vice it was not known until the spread of Islamism, when, by the tenets of the Prophet, wine and fermented liquors being prohibited, it came in their stead, along with the bang or hashshash, coffee and tobacco.
