illicit trade. At this time there were more than fifty small craft
plying on the river under the English and American flags, most of them
smugglers. Some of these were seized and destroyed, but as the others
were then heavily manned and armed the revenue officers declined to
interfere with them, and the contraband trade went briskly on.

At length the difficulty reached a climax. Arrests and punishments for
the use of opium became common throughout the empire, three royal
princes were degraded for this practice, a commissioner with large
powers was sent from Peking to Canton, and the foreigners were ordered
to deliver up every particle of opium in their store-ships and give
bonds to bring no more, on penalty of death. As a result, somewhat more
than one thousand chests were tendered to the commissioner, but this was
declared to be not enough, and that official at once took the decisive
measure of cutting off the food-supply from the foreign settlement. This
and other active steps brought about the desired result. Captain Elliot,
the British superintendent of commerce, advised a complete delivery of
all opium under British control, and before night more than twenty
thousand chests of the deleterious drug were surrendered into his hands,
and were offered by him to the commissioner the next day.

News of this event was sent to Peking, and orders came back that the
opium should be all destroyed; which was done effectively by mixing it
with salt water and lime in trenches and drawing off the mixture into an
adjacent creek. Care was taken that none should be purloined, and one
man was executed on the spot for attempting to steal a small portion of
the drug. Thus perished an amount of the valuable substance rated at
cost price at nearly eleven million dollars.

We have described this event at some length, as it led to the first war
between China and a foreign power. The destruction of the opium deeply
offended the British government, and in the next year (1840) Captain
Elliot received an official letter to the effect that war would be
declared unless China should pay for the goods destroyed. As China
showed no intention of doing so, an English fleet was sent to Chinese
waters in the summer of 1841, whose admiral declared a blockade of the
port of Canton, and, on July 5, bombarded and captured the town of
Ting-hai. Various other places were blockaded, and, as the emperor
rejected all demands, the fleet moved upon Canton, taki