of the concessions, in this regard, was the
Austrian. Lying nearest to the native city, it had profited more largely
than any of the others by the native prohibition. It seemed also to have
the largest Chinese population; indeed, in appearance it was more like the
quaint old Chinese city than any of the other foreign municipalities.

We entered only three of the Austrian dens. But we saw the signs and
glanced in through the doorways of so many others that I was quite ready
to accept Mr. Sung's rough estimate of the total number within the narrow
confines of the concession: he put it at fifty to one hundred. It is
difficult to be exact in these estimates, because where laws are so
languidly enforced the official returns hardly begin to state the full
number of flourishing establishments. These three dens which we entered
were enough to make an ineffaceable impression on the mind of one
traveller. I have eaten and slept in native hostelries, in the interior,
so unspeakably dirty and insanitary that to describe them in these pages
would exceed all bounds of taste, but I have never been in a filthier
place than at least one of these Austrian dens. And the other two were
little better. It would require some means more adequate than pen, ink,
and paper, to convey to the reader an accurate notion of the mingled,
half-blended odours which seemed to underlie, or to form a background for,
the overpowering fumes of what passed here for opium. What this drug
compound was I really do not know; but it was sold at the rate of two
pipes for three cents, Mexican, equivalent to a cent and a half, gold. For
real opium, of fair or good quality, it is quite possible, in China, to
pay from ten to twenty times as much. Such dens as this, then, are not
only vicious resorts maintained for the purpose of catering to a
degrading habit; they are also breeding places of disease and pestilence.

Thus one night's work made it plain that the foreign concessions were
taking no steps that would evidence a spirit of cooeperation with the
Chinese authorities in their vigorous attempt to check and control the
ravages of opium. Tientsin, like Shanghai, did not care. Tientsin, like
Shanghai, is sowing the wind in China.

Let us now turn aside for a moment to consider the third important point
of contact between the two kinds of civilization--Hongkong.

Hongkong is neither a "settlement" nor a "concession." It is a British
crown colony, with its own govern