Page 157 - AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS

Around the World in 80 Days

which caught his eye on the quay. On entering, they
found themselves in a large room handsomely decorated,
at the end of which was a large camp-bed furnished with
cushions. Several persons lay upon this bed in a deep sleep.

At the small tables which were arranged about the room
some thirty customers were drinking English beer, porter,
gin, and brandy; smoking, the while, long red clay pipes
stuffed with little balls of opium mingled with essence of
rose. From time to time one of the smokers, overcome
with the narcotic, would slip under the table, whereupon
the waiters, taking him by the head and feet, carried and
laid him upon the bed. The bed already supported twenty
of these stupefied sots.
Fix and Passepartout saw that they were in a smoking-
house haunted by those wretched, cadaverous, idiotic
creatures to whom the English merchants sell every year
the miserable drug called opium, to the amount of one
million four hundred thousand pounds— thousands
devoted to one of the most despicable vices which afflict
humanity! The Chinese government has in vain attempted
to deal with the evil by stringent laws. It passed gradually
from the rich, to whom it was at first exclusively reserved,
to the lower classes, and then its ravages could not be
arrested. Opium is smoked everywhere, at all times, by

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