o
denounce it; I am not impelled by an irresistible desire to investigate
facts and put them before you. There is practically no opium in Yuen-nan
to talk about.

This is absolute fact--not a Chinese fact, but good old British truth
(although British truth when it touches upon opium has been very, very
perverted since we first commenced to transact opium trade with this
great country). With the exception of one small patch, some ten miles
away from the main road between Yuen-nan-fu and Tali-fu, I saw no poppy
whatever in the province. This does not mean, however, that no opium is
to be had.

During the past three weeks[L] no less than five cases of attempted
suicide by opium poisoning have come under my personal notice in the
town in which I am residing, and there have doubtless been fifty more
which have not. If there is no opium, where do the people so easily
secure it in endeavors to take their lives upon the slightest
provocation? Last year the price of opium here on the streets, although
its sale was "illegal," was over three tsien (about nine-pence) the
Chinese ounce of prepared opium. At the present time, in the same city,
many men would be willing to do a deal for any quantity you like for
less than two tsien. Cases of smuggling are frequent. One gets
accustomed to hear of large quantities being smuggled through in most
cunning ways, and it all goes to show that the _people_ of Yuen-nan are
not, as some of China's enlightened statesmen and some of the ranting
faddists of England and America would have us believe, falling over one
another in their zeal to free the province from the drug.

The other day some men passed through several towns, on the way to the
capital, carrying three coffins. In the first was a corpse, the other
two were packed with opium. Being suspected at Yuen-nan-fu, the first
coffin was opened, and the carriers, making as much row as they could
because their coffin had been burst open, secured a fair "squeeze" to
hold their tongues, and the second and third coffins were passed
unexamined. Quite common is it for men to travel in armed bands from the
province of Kwei-chow, traveling by night over the mountains by
lantern-light, and hiding by day from any possible official searchers.

Opium, which is and always has been so heavily taxed, does not in
general follow the ordinary trade routes on which _likin_ stations are
numerous, but is carried by these armed bands over roads where the
native