sands of lives, the fixing on the race
of a soul-blighting vice, the loss of some of her best seaports, more, the
loss of her independence as a nation--but she had learned it. And
therefore, except for a crazy outburst now and then as the foreign grip
grew tighter, she was to submit.

But China's trouble was not over. If she was to be debauched whether or
no, must she also be ruined financially? There were the indemnity payments
to meet, with interest; and no way of meeting them other than to squeeze
tighter a poverty-stricken nation which was growing more poverty-stricken
as her silver drained steadily off to the foreigners. There was a solution
to the problem--a simple one. It was to permit the growth of opium in
China itself, supplant the Indian trade, keep the silver at home. But
China was slow to adopt this solution. It might solve the fiscal problem;
but incidentally it might wreck China. She sounded England on the
subject,--once, twice. There seemed to have been some idea that England,
convinced that China had her own possibility of crowding out the Indian
drug, might, after all, give up the trade, stop the production in India,
and make the great step unnecessary. But England could not see it in that
light. China wavered, then took the great step. The restrictions on
opium-growing were removed. This was probably a mistake, though opinions
still differ about that. To the men who stood responsible for a solution
of Chinese fiscal problem it doubtless seemed necessary. At all events,
the last barrier between China and ruin was removed by the Chinese
themselves. And within less than half a century after the native growth of
the poppy began, the white and pink and mauve blossoms have spread across
the great empire, north and south, east and west, until to-day, in
blossom-time almost every part of every province has its white and mauve
patches. You may see them in Manchuria, on the edge of the great desert of
Gobi, within a dozen miles of Peking; you may see them from the headwaters
of the mighty Yangtse to its mouth, up and down the coast for two thousand
miles, on the distant borders of Thibet.

No one knows how much opium was grown in China last year. There are
estimates--official, missionary, consular; and they disagree by thousands
and tens of thousands of tons. But it is known that where the delicate
poppy is reared, it demands and receives the best land. It thrives in the
rich river-bottoms. It has crowded out g