ing it on the pipe-bowl, some dozing off the fumes, and a few
smoking. An attendant moved about the room with fresh supplies of the
drug. For each thimbleful, enough for one or two smokes, the price was
fifteen cents (Mexican).

The smokers seemed to be mainly of the lower classes; though hardly so low
as coolies, who are lucky to earn as much as fifteen cents in a day. It
was evident to both of my companions, from the appearance of these men and
from their talk, that they could ill afford the luxury. The number of
smokes indulged in seemed to range from three or four up to an indefinite
number. The youngest and healthiest appearing man in the room told us that
after three pipes he could go home and go to sleep in comfort. He had been
at it less than a year, he said; and, judging from the expression of
peaceful content that came over his face as he held the pipe-bowl over the
lamp and drew the smoke deep into his lungs, he had not yet begun to feel
the ravages of the drug.

The next den we entered was small, crowded, and dirty. The price was only
ten cents. But the third den was the largest and decidedly the most
interesting of any that we saw. Like the others, it was situated in a
prosperous section of the Taiku Road, with its red light conspicuously
displayed over the door. From the facts that it was frankly open for
business and that not the slightest concern was shown at our entrance, it
seemed fair to believe that the keepers had no fear whatever of publicity
or of the law. Even when we announced ourselves to be investigators, our
questions were answered cheerfully and fully, and the man who escorted us
from room to room was apparently proud of the establishment. The couches
were not all occupied, but I counted thirty-five men sitting or reclining
on them. One man had a child with him, a girl of some six or eight years
of age, and when he had prepared his pipe and smoked it he permitted her
to take a whiff or two. In a rear room we saw four women smoking with the
men. The price of a smoke in this den was twenty-five cents.

I do not know how many opium dens were open for business in the French
concession on this particular April 23d, 1907, but of those that were open
I personally either entered or at least saw fifteen or sixteen, and that
without attempting anything in the nature of an exhaustive search. In the
Italian and Russian concessions I found about sixty dens open, mostly of a
very low grade. But the worst