nly, and find ourselves in an apartment about
fifteen feet square. We can touch the ceiling on tiptoe, yet there are
three tiers of bunks placed with headboards to the wall, and each bunk
just broad enough for two occupants. It is like the steerage in an
emigrant vessel, eminently shipshape. Every bunk is filled; some of the
smokers have had their dream and lie in grotesque attitudes, insensible,
ashen-pale, having the look of plague-stricken corpses.

Some are dreaming; you see it in the vacant eye, the listless face, the
expression that betrays hopeless intoxication. Some are preparing
the enchanting pipe,--a laborious process, that reminds one of an
incantation. See those two votaries lying face to face, chatting in low
voices, each loading his pipe with a look of delicious expectation in
every feature. They recline at full length; their heads rest upon blocks
of wood or some improvised pillow; a small oil-lamp flickers between
them. Their pipes resemble flutes, with an inverted ink-bottle on the
side near the lower end. They are most of them of bamboo, and very often
are beautifully colored with the mellowest and richest tints of a wisely
smoked meerschaum. A small jar of prepared opium--a thick black paste
resembling tar--stands near the lamp.

The smoker leisurely dips a wire into the paste; a few drops adhere to
it, and he twirls the wire in the flame of the lamp, where they fry and
bubble; he then draws them upon the rim of the clay pipe-bowl, and at
once inhales three or four mouthfuls of whitish smoke. This empties the
pipe, and the slow process of feeding the bowl is lazily repeated. It is
a labor of love; the eyes gloat upon the bubbling drug which shall anon
witch the soul of those emaciated toilers. They renew the pipe again
and again; their talk grows less frequent and dwindles to a whispered
soliloquy.

We address them, and are smiled at by delirious eyes; but the ravenous
lips are sealed to that magic tube, from which they draw the breath of
a life we know not of. Their fingers relax; their heads sink upon the
pillows; they no longer respond, even by a glance, when we now appeal
to them. Here is the famous Malay, the fearful enemy of De Quincey, who
nightly drugged his master into Asiatic seas, and now himself is basking
in the tropical heats and vertical sunlight of Hindustan. Egypt and her
gods are his; for him the secret chambers of Cheops are unlocked; he
also is transfixed at the summit of pagoda