Inside of the city of Canton, as we heard from Chinese, the price rose to $3,000, while the sale of it or the smoking of it was almost a matter of life and death--the latter was the penalty threatened and even carried out against those who were known to indulge in it. The Imperial Commissioner was on the spot; he was inexorable, consternation prevailed throughout the Chinese community, but we heard from good authority that the number of the beheaded was not large.
While the opium trade was going on, discussions often occurred as to the morality of it, as well as to the effect of smoking on the Chinese. None of the Hong merchants ever had anything to do with it, and several of the foreign houses refrained from dealing in it on conscientious grounds. As to its influence on the inhabitants of the city and suburbs at large, they were a healthy, active, hard-working, and industrious people, withal cheerful and frugal. They were intelligent in business, skilful in manufactures and handicrafts. These traits are inconsistent with habitual smoking, while the costliness of the prepared drug was such as to render a dilution of it (to bring it within the means of the masses) utterly harmless. Amongst the wealthier classes, no doubt, it was more or less common, this we knew; but I myself, and I think I may safely say the entire foreign community, rarely, if ever, saw any one physically or mentally injured by it. No evidences of a general abuse, rarely of the use of the pipe, were apparent. I remember one man having been brought to a missionary hospital to be treated for excessive smoking of opium, but he was looked upon as a Lion and much was made of him. In fact, smoking was a habit, as the use of wine was with us, in moderation. As compared with the use of spirituous liquors in the United States and in England, and the evil consequences of it, that of opium was infinitesimal. This is my personal experience during a residence at Canton, Macao, and Hong Kong of forty years.
For many years after the first foreign merchants came to Canton, they were not permitted to remain after their vessels were despatched, but were obliged to leave in them. In the case of the great Companies such as the English East India and the Dutch, it gradually became a great inconvenience. These, therefore, retired to Macao, where in time residences were specially built for their accommodation. (The old Dutch factory there, which had stood for over a century, was destroyed by a taiphoon in 1875.) The removal from Canton to Macao took place at the close of the north-east monsoon, simultaneously with the commencement of the dead season, when the market would have been cleared of teas and few or no vessels at Whampoa. Macao possesses a delightful climate, completely within the sea breezes, and is beautifully situated; it moreover offers in its entirety perhaps a unique specimen of Western colonies in the Eastern world as they existed 250 years ago--in its forts, churches, and walls, its convent, senate-house, and the extensive, solidly built, private residences.
