the store-house is surrounded. A faint scent
as of decaying vegetable matter assailed our
noses as we entered the court of the go-down;
as for the go-down itself, it was a group of
long buildings fashioned in the common Indian
style, Venetian-doored, and having a great deal
more door than wall. In and out and about
these doors there was a movement of scantily
clad coolies (porters) bearing on their heads
large earthen vessels;  these vessels, carefully
sealed, contained opium fresh out of the poppy
district. Poppy-headed—I mean red-turbaned
—accountants bustled about, while Burkunday
(or policemen) whose brains appeared to
be as full of drowsiness as any jar in the
go-down, were lazily lounging about, with their
swords beside them, or else fastened in sleep
beside their swords.

The doorway was shown to us through
which we should get at the  "Sahib," or officer
on duty. Entering the doorway, we pushed
through a crowd of natives into an
atmosphere drugged powerfully with the scent of
opium. The members of the crowd were all
carrying tin vessels; each vessel was half full
of opium, in the form of a black, sticky dough,
and contained also a ticket showing the name
of the grower, a specimen of whose opium
was therein presented, with the names of
the village and district in which it was
grown.

The can-bearers, eager as cannibals, all
crowded round a desk, at which their victim,
the gentleman on duty, sat. Cans were flowing
in from all sides. On the right hand of
the Sahib stood a native Mephistopheles, with
sleeves tucked up, who darted his hand into
the middle of each can as it came near, pawed
the contents with a mysterious rapidity,
extracted a bit of the black dough, carried it
briskly to his nose, and instantly pronounced
in English a number which the Sahib, who
has faith in his familiar, inscribed at once in
red ink on the ticket. As I approached,
Mephistopheles was good enough to hold a
dainty morsel to my nose, and call upon me
to express the satisfaction of a gourmand. It
was a lump of the finest, I was told. So
readily can this native tell by the feel of opium
whether foreign substance has been added,
and so readily can he distinguish by the smell
its quality, that this test by Mephistopheles is
rarely found to differ much in its result from
the more elaborate tests presently to be
described. The European official, who was working
with the thermometer at a hundred, would
be unable to remain longer than four hours
at his desk; at the end of that time another
would come to release him, and assume his
place.

Out of each can, when it was presented for
the first rough test, a small portion of the
dough was taken, to be carried off into
another room. Into this room we were introduced,
and found the thermometer working
its way up from a hundred and ten degrees
to a hundred and twenty. On our left, as we
entered, was a table, whereat about half-a-
dozen natives sat, weighing out, in measured
portions of one hundred grains, the specimens
that had been just sent to them out of the
chamber of cans. Each portion of a hundred
grains was placed, as it was weighed, upon a
small plate by itself, with its own proper
ticket by its side. The plates were in the
next place carried to another part of the
chamber, fitted up with steam baths—not
unlike tables in appearance—and about these
baths or tables boys were sitting, who, with
spatulas, industriously spread the opium over
each plate, as though the plate were bread,
and the opium upon it were a piece of butter.
This being done over the steam-bath, caused
the water to depart out of the drug, and left
upon the plate a dry powder, which, being
weighed, and found to be about twenty-three
grains lighter by the loss of moisture, is called
standard opium. If the hundred grains after
evaporation leave a residue of more than
seventy-seven, the manufacturer is paid a
higher price for his more valuable sample;
if the water be found in excess, the price paid
for the opium-dough is, of course, lower than
the standard. I thought it a quaint sight
when I watched the chattering young chemists
naked to the waist, at work over their heated
tables, grinding vigorously with their blunt
knife-blades over what appeared to be a very
dirty set of cheese-plates. But, the heat of
this room was so great that we felt in our
own bodies what was taking place about us,
and before there had been time for the reduction
of each hundred grains of our own flesh
to the standard seventy-seven, we beat a
retreat from the chamber of evaporations.

With the curiosity of Bluebeard's wives we
proceeded to inspect the mysteries of the next
chamber. It was full of vats, and in the vats
was opium, and over the vats were ropes
depending from the ceiling, and depending
from the ropes were naked men—natives—
themselves somewhat opium-coloured, kicking
and stamping lustily within the vats upon the
opium; each vat was in fact a mortar, and
each man a living pestle, and in this room a
quantity of opium—worth more lacs of rupees
than I have ever had between my fingers—
was being mixed and kneaded by the legs of
men, preparatory to being made up into pills.
From the chamber of pestles, with curiosity
unsated, we went forward to peep into the
chamber of the pills.

A rush of imps, in the tight brown dresses
furnished to them gratuitously by their
mother Nature, each imp carrying a bolus in
his hand of about the size of a forty-two
pound shot, encountered us, and almost laid
us prostrate as we entered. This—the fourth—
chamber was a long and narrow room quite
full of busy natives, every tongue industriously
talking, and every finger nimble over work.
Around the walls of this room there are low
stools placed at even distances, and upon each
stool a workman rather squats than sits,