of pearl, or white sago, from the raw state, which is brought from the N.E. coast of Sumatra, and the N.W. coast of Borneo. Almost the whole of the sago of commerce is prepared here, and all but exclusively by Chinese labour. Sago is chiefly obtained from the pith of several species of palm, but more particularly from the Sagus Rumphii and the Sagus Laevii, both of which are rather limited in their area of cultivation, and are not, like the cosmopolitan cocoa-nut palm, found in every quarter of the tropical zone, both in the Old and New World, but are indigenous to the Indian Archipelago alone. The trunk of the sago-palm, when felled, is a cylinder of about 20 inches in diameter, and from 15 to 20 feet in length, which, when the woody fibres have been separated, contains about 700 lbs of clear fine fecula. One may form some conception of its extraordinary productiveness on learning that three sago-palms contain as much nutritious matter as an acre of land grown with wheat! One piece of ground of the extent of an English acre planted with sago-palms occasionally yields 313,000 lbs of sago, or as much food as 163 acres of wheat. The sago however is neither as palatable nor as nutritious as it is productive, and nowhere, where rice is in common use, will it be displaced by this article of food. We visited the largest sago manufacture in Singapore, in which the sago, as it comes in the raw state from Borneo and Sumatra, is washed and roasted, when it becomes the pearl sago of commerce. The quantity thus prepared annually amounts to about 100,000 cwt.
Singapore was also the first place where we found an opportunity of becoming acquainted with opium-smokers, and of observing the noxious effects of this custom, which was forced upon the Chinese for the purpose of compelling commercial relations. Although in almost every street in Singapore there are houses in which opium is sold and can be smoked (the so-called "Licensed opium shops"), there is, in order to keep more control over it, only one single place where the opium is prepared for smoking from the raw material, called by the English the "Opium farm," from which all retail dealers must purchase their supplies of stock.
Before describing our visit to this curious factory we shall indulge in a few observations upon a plant whose intoxicating, poisonous milky sap produces such singular effects upon the human system. The poppy (papaver somniferum), is chiefly grown in Hindostan in the districts of Benares, Patna, and Malwa. Its cultivation is exceedingly arduous, and very precarious, since the tender young plants require constant care and attention in the way of repeated watering, as well as weeding and turning up the soil, besides which there is the ever-present danger of its destruction by insects, or its loss through storm, or hail, or untimely rains. The plant blooms in the month of February, and three months later the seed is ripe. The incision into the capsule however is made three or four weeks earlier, so soon, in short, as it is covered with a fine white mealy dust. The instrument employed in this operation has three prongs with very sharp points, with
which the plant is carefully scratched. Each plant is thus tapped for three consecutive days, the operation beginning with the first warm beams of the morning sun; the milky sap is scraped off in the cool of the next morning, and on the fourth morning each plant is again tried as to whether it still exudes sap, but usually it proves to have been exhausted. The juice as scraped off in its coagulated form, is put into a cask along with linseed oil, in order not to get too quickly dry, and then is made by hand-kneading into round flat cakes, of about four pounds' weight, and about five inches in diameter, which, enveloped in poppy and tobacco leaves, are spread out to dry in earthen dishes, till ready for purposes of commerce. In this stage the opium is packed in boxes of ten cakes or about 40 lbs, and thus passes from the hands of the grower or the speculator at certain fixed prices into those of the agents of the East India Company. The very anxious and precarious cultivation of the poppy must prove far less remunerative to the proprietor of the land than the much easier task of raising tobacco or sugar-cane, and it is only the long-established but most impoverishing system of payments in advance, pursued by the agents of the East India Company, that keeps the Hindoos engaged in opium cultivation.[31]
At the opium farm in Singapore we saw this same coagulated juice, as obtained from the poppy, converted into opium
suitable for smoking, which is called chandú, the process consisting in its being exposed to the action of heat in large semicircular brass pans, strained through filters, and once more exposed to a low heat, until it finally coagulates into a consistency strongly resembling treacle or syrup. The whole manipulation occupies from four to five days. A cattie or ball of this thickened poppy-juice costs the manufacturer about 20 dols. From ten such balls of the raw sap, or about 40 lbs, which is the usual weight of each "chest," as imported from Hindostan, 216 "tiles" or about 18 lbs of opium are obtained upon an average. We saw the Chinese dealer place in one of the scales a Spanish dollar, instead of a regular weight, and measure off a corresponding weight of opium in the other, A Chí, weighing about 1⁄16 oz., the ordinary quantity consumed by an opium-smoker, costs 17 1⁄2 cents, or nine-pence. The duty levied upon this manufacture gives the government a revenue of £3000 a month, for the exclusive right of preparing opium fit for smoking, chandú, for consumption on the island.
As often as the apparatus is called into activity, the Chinese employed in the preparation of the opium, in pursuance of what seems with them a regular custom at the commencement of any spell of work, commit to the flames, after repeating a certain set of formulas of prayer, a number of octavo-sized leaves (Tschni-tschni-sóa) of paper printed upon one side only, and occasionally provided in very large quantities: on these fabrics of the roughest material are printed
sometimes prayers in Chinese, sometimes all kinds of drawings, intended to express the wishes of those making the offering, and which ordinarily represent in very sketchy outline those objects which they pray their deities to bestow on them. In thus burning, in a copper vessel specially prepared for the purpose, not unlike the baptismal font in a Christian church, these small slips of paper, the Chinese operative believes that his petition ascends to heaven as smoke, and so comes under the cognizance of his protecting gods. Similarly in all temples and pagodas, large quantities may be found stored away of these paper intercessors with the Chinese gods, intended for the use of believers, or rather of those who make profession of faith.
The workmen of the opium farm have a part of their wages paid in opium. The greater number are themselves opium-smokers, and thus are all the more surely attached to the manufacture. We saw a number of these fellows lying stretched out on straw mats, in wretched filthy-looking dens of rooms, with blue curtains barely concealing them from view, and the spirit-lamp placed conveniently near to enable them from time to time to heat the chandú, the smoke of which they inhale through a peculiarly constructed pipe (Yeu-tsiang). The quantity of opium taken up at each dip by the instrument used, a three-cornered, flat-headed sort of needle specially adapted for the purpose, is about the size of a pea. The practised opium-smoker holds his breath for a considerable time, and passes the smoke through the nostrils.