having before him a brass cup, of which the
interior would fit one half of a bolus. Before
each man upon a stool there stands a man
without a stool, and a boy with a saucer. The
man without a stool has by his side a number
of dried poppy leaves, of which he takes a
few, and having moistened them in a dark
gummy liquid, which is simply composed of
the washings of the various vessels used in
the establishment, he hands the moistened
poppy leaves to the man upon the stool who
sits before the cup. The man upon the stool,
who has been rubbing the same liquid gum
with his fingers over the inner surface of the
cup—as housekeepers, I suppose, butter their
jelly moulds—proceeds to fit in two or three
leaves; then, with his fingers spreads over
them more gum; then, adds a few leaves more,
and fits them neatly with his closed hand
round the bottom of the cup, until he has
made a good lining to it. His companion
without the stool has, in the meantime,
brought to his hand a fixed quantity of opium,
a mass weighing two pounds, and this the
genius of the stool puts into the cup; leaves
are then added on the top of it, and by a
series of those dexterous and inscrutably
rapid twists of the hand with which all
cunning workmen are familiar, he rapidly
twists out of his cup a ball of opium, within a
yellowish brown coat of leaves, resembling, as
I have already said, a forty-two pound shot.
He shoots it suddenly into the earthen saucer
held out by the boy, and instantly the boy
takes to his heels and scampers off with his
big pill of opium, which is to be taken into
the yard and there exposed to the air until it
shall have dried. These pills are called
cakes, but they belong, evidently, to the class
of unwholesome confectionary. A workman
of average dexterity makes seventy such cakes
in a day. During the manufacturing season,
this factory turns out daily from six thousand
five hundred to seven thousand cakes; the
number of cakes made in the same factory in
one season being altogether about twenty-
seven thousand. A large proportion of these
cakes are made for the Chinese, but they do
not at all agree with the Chinese digestion.
The manufacture of the opium is not hurtful
to the health of those who are engaged upon
the factory.

The key of a fifth chamber being in our
power, we continued steadfast in our enterprise,
and boldly looked into the chemical test-room
of a small laboratory, of which the
genius appeared before us suddenly with a
benign expression on his countenance, and
offered chairs. His clothes are greatly
splashed, and he is busy among opium tins, of
which the contents have been pronounced
suspicious by the Mephistopheles in the first
chamber. From the contents of one of these
cans an assistant takes a portion, and having
made with it a solution in a test tube, hands
it to the chemist. The chemist, from bottles
in which potent and mysterious spirits are
locked up, selecting one, bids it, by the
mysterious name of iodine, depart into the
solution and declare whether he finds starch
to be there. The iodine spirit does its bidding,
goes among the opium, and promptly there
flashes through the glass a change of colour,
the appointed signal, by which the magic
spirit of the bottle telegraphs to the benign
genius of the laboratory, that "The grower
who sent this opium fraudulently added flour
to it, in order to increase its weight." The
fraud having been exposed, the adulterated
drug has a little red ink mark made upon its
ticket. The consequence of that mark will be
confiscation, and great disappointment to the
dealer who attempted a dishonest increase of
his gain.

We have nothing more to see, but we have
something more to hear, and the very kind
chemist will be our informant. There are
two opium agencies, one at Patna and one at
Ghazeepore. I know nothing whatever about
Patna. For the Ghazeepore Agency, the
opium is grown in a district lying between its
head quarters, Ghazeepore, and Agra. Its
cultivation gives employment to one hundred
and twenty-seven thousand labourers. The
final preparation of the ground takes place
in the months of October and November.
Under the most favourable circumstances of
soil and season, twenty-four or twenty-six
pounds weight of standard opium is got from
one biggah of land; one biggah being a little
more than three-fifths of an acre. Under
unfavourable circumstances, the yield may
be as little as six or eight pounds to the
biggah, the average produce being from
twelve pounds to sixteen.

To obtain the opium, as is well known, the
capsule of the poppy is scored or cut; the
scoring is effected with a peculiar tool that
makes three or four (vertical and parallel)
wounds at a single stroke. This wounding of
the hearts of the poppies is commonly the
work of women. The wounds having been
made, the quantity of juice exuding seems to
depend very much upon conditions of the
atmosphere. Dews increase the flow, but
while they make it more abundant, they
cause it also to be darker and more liquid.
East winds lessen the exudation. A moderate
westerly wind, with dews at night, is the
condition most favourable to the opium
harvest, both as regards quantity and quality
of produce.

The average per centage of morphia in this
opium is from one and three quarters to
three and a half; of narcotine, from three
quarters to three and a half. These are the
valuable principles of the drug. In some
opium, the per centage of morphia runs up to
ten and three quarters per cent. of morphia,
and six per cent.  of narcotine.

The income drawn from its opium by the
East India Company amounts to some two
and a half crores of rupees—two and a half
millions of pounds sterling.