Perhaps a quarter of the whole number of opium smokers use it to the extent of producing stupefaction habitually; these are all old smokers. The habit grows upon one steadily, and it soon becomes a terrible tyrant. When once the habit has become fixed upon a man, there is no possibility of its being thrown off. He daily requires more and more of the drug, while his strength slowly fails him; his appetite for ordinary food disappears; he becomes lean and attenuated; his brain becomes so affected, that it refuses to act unless the stimulant is furnished, and sooner or later consumption sets in, and the victim dies by inches, as it were, sometimes suffering horribly, while at others he is hardly conscious of suffering at all.
The importation of opium into the Pacific states amounts to millions annually, and the great bulk of it is consumed in smoking by the Chinamen. The women never smoke it; are not allowed to visit the opium houses, in fact. The wealthier Chinamen have accommodations for opium smoking in the upper or back rooms of the buildings which they occupy as stores and dwellings, and do not associate with the common herd who patronize the public opium dens. One Chinese friend thought it a very bad thing, this opium smoking, but admitted that he occasionally took a whiff at it himself, when he felt unsettled, and wanted to quiet his nerves for a night’s sleep.
DRINKING SAMSHOO.
While we were talking, the colonel suggested that I was a stranger, and had never tasted “Samshoo.” Our merchant friend at once took down a curious looking black bottle,—something like those that Curacoa comes in, wound with some kind of straw string from top to bottom, and having a label in white and vermilion, with Chinese characters,—drew the cork, and poured out a quantity of a dark-brown liquor, something like arrack in appearance, into a little china bowl, which he passed to me, assuring me that it was a very superior article, and pressing me to drink it.
I tasted it, and found it not very strong, but with a curious flavor, something between old Madeira wine and bottled ale, with a marked unpleasant smell, as of decaying vegetable matter. What is it made from? “Licey!” was his prompt response. The doctor explained that it was distilled from rice—mainly the cold rice and refuse from the restaurants, he said—flavored and colored with dried peas, or some similar fruit, and strengthened and enriched with a fine old nutty taste by the addition of a piece of fat roasted pork before bottling. The Chinese consider this a great luxury, and have their private stocks of it, which they regard with as much pride as is felt by a fine old English gentleman for his cellar of “old crusted port; vintage of 1803.” A little of it satisfied me. I think the taste for it must be an acquired one.
Some months afterwards I drank some samshoo, in Northern China, that was far worse than that furnished to me in San Francisco. It was served hot, in small glasses about as large as a thimble. It burned like nitric acid; and I half believed that I had swallowed a torch-light procession with all its lamps trimmed and blazing. I was dining with a Chinese official, and the etiquette of the occasion required me to swallow the vile stuff. By the time I had disposed of a gill or so, my head felt like the paddle-box of a steamer, and my throat was as raw as a freshly cut beefsteak. No more samshoo for me, if you please.
Our new-found friend gave us a card, on which he wrote some characters in Chinese by way of an introduction, and pointed out the entrance to an opium house on the other side of the street. We went over and found the establishment located on the second story adjoining a Chinese restaurant. The proprietor of the house, or “gentlemanly clerk,” looked at our card, and at once offered us the hospitalities of the place.
It was, of course, a very poor place, but he would do the best he could for us. There were half a dozen small rooms on the one floor, divided by rough partitions. We entered one of them, and found three raised platforms or beds, with bamboo framework; and in place of our usual mattress, a flat surface of braided cane, like one of our cane-seated chairs, on which to sleep. This is the usual bed of the Chinaman. He does not fancy spring mattresses, curled hair, or feathers to repose upon, and instead of stripping himself and crawling under a pile of woollen blankets, as we do, he lies down in his ordinary clothing, and rarely has anything else over him, unless it is a single blanket when the weather is unusually cool, or the room is open and subject to drafts. He does not destroy his lustrous black hair by burying his head in a hot feather or curled hair pillow, as we do, but has a block of wood or a cylindrical pillow, of braided cane open at both ends for ventilation, which he places just under the top of his neck. This keeps him from becoming bald-headed, and is uncomfortable enough to make him an early riser; but like all other systems, it has its disadvantages. In time it throws his neck out of line, giving it a permanent forward bend, not graceful in itself, and rather unpleasant for an outside barbarian to look upon. When he travels he usually carries his favorite pillow with him, and at his death his head rests upon it in his coffin.
OPIUM SMOKERS IN BED.
Two of the beds in this room were occupied when we came in, the other was vacant. On one a Chinese was stretched at full length upon his back, in utter unconsciousness; his eyes were wide open, but apparently receiving no impression from the objects before them, and there was a vacant, meaningless smile upon his sallow countenance. His opium pipe or stick lay on the couch beside him, having fallen from his hand, and near his head stood the small, nut-oil lamp, with a glass cover like an inverted tumbler with a hole in the bottom, the tiny taper burning low in the socket.