a
minute or two to take a whiff of tobacco; they were always in good
humour, and finished the day as strong and fresh as when they began it.
Within an hour of their arrival all these three men were lying on their
sides in the room opposite to mine, with their opium-pipes and little
wooden vials of opium before them, all three engaged in rolling and
heating in their opium-lamps treacly pellets of opium. Then they had
their daily smoke of opium. "They were ruining themselves body and
soul." Two of the men were past middle age; the third was a strapping
young fellow of twenty-five. They may have only recently acquired the
habit, I had no means of asking them; but those who know Western China
will tell you that it is almost certain that the two elder men had used
the opium-pipe as a stimulant since they were as young as their
companion. All three men were physically well-developed, with large
frames, showing unusual muscular strength and endurance, and differed,
indeed, from those resurrected corpses whose fleshless figures, drawn by
imaginative Chinese artists, we have known for years to be typical of
our poor lost brothers--the opium-smoking millions of China. For their
work to-day, work that few men out of China would be capable of
attempting, the three coolies were paid sevenpence each, out of which
they found themselves, and had to pay as well one penny each for the
hire of the chair.

On arriving at the inn in Tak-wan-hsien my estimable comrade, one of the
six surviving converts of Suifu, indicated to me that his cash belt was
empty--up the road he could not produce a single cash for me to give a
beggar--and pointing in turn to the bag where I kept my silver, to the
ceiling and to his heart, he conveyed to me the pious assurance that if
I would give him some silver from the bag he would bring me back the
true change, on his honour, so witness Heaven! I gave him two lumps of
silver which I made him understand were worth 3420 cash; he went away,
and after a suspicious absence returned quite gleefully with 3050 cash,
the bank, no doubt, having detained the remainder pending the
declaration of a bogus dividend. But he also brought back with him what
was better than cash, some nutritious maize-meal cakes, which proved a
welcome change from the everlasting rice. They were as large as an
English scone, and cost two cash apiece, that is to say, for one
shilling I could buy twenty dozen.

Money in Western China consists of s