opium are obliged to get along without free
money.

When it has been manufactured, the opium must be disposed of in one way
and another; accordingly:

"The supply of prepared opium required for consumption in India is made
over to the Excise Department.... The chests of 'provision' opium, for
export, are sold by auction at monthly sales, which take place at
Calcutta." For the meaning of the curious term, "provision opium," we have
only to read on a little further. "The opium is received and prepared at
the government factories, where the out-turn for the year included 8,774
chests of opium for the Excise Department, about 300 pounds of various
opium alkaloids, thirty maunds of medical opium, and 51,770 chests of
provision opium for the Chinese market." There are about 140 pounds in a
chest. Four grains of opium, administered in one dose to a person
unaccustomed to its use, is apt to prove fatal.

Last year the government had under poppy cultivation 654,928 acres. And
the revenue to the treasury, including returns from auction sales, duties,
and license fees, and deducting all "opium expenditures," was nearly
$22,000,000 (L4,486,562).

The best grade of opium-poppy bears a white blossom. One sees mauve and
pink tints in a field, at blossom-time, but only the seeds from the white
flowers are replanted. The opium of commerce is made from the gum obtained
by gashing the green seed pod with a four-bladed knife. After the first
gathering, the pod is gashed a second time, and the gum that exudes makes
an inferior quality of opium. The raw opium from the country districts is
sent down to the government factories in earthenware jars, worked up in
mixing vats, and made into balls about six or eight inches in diameter.
The balls, after a thorough drying on wooden racks, are packed in chests
and sent down to the auction.

[Illustration: KNEADING CRUDE OPIUM WITH OIL TO MAKE ROUND OR FLAT CAKES]

[Illustration: MAKING ROUND CAKES OF OPIUM]

The men who buy in the opium at these monthly auctions and afterwards
dispose of it at the Chinese ports are a curious crowd of Parsees,
Mohammedans, Hindoos, and Asiatic Jews. Few British names appear in the
opium trade to-day. British dignity prefers not to stoop beneath the
taking in of profits; it leaves the details of a dirty business to dirty
hands. This is as it has been from the first. The directors of the East
India Company, years and years before that splendid corporation
re