October the 31st, the Mississippi returned to _Cumsing-moon_, which in the celestial dialect means, “Golden-sun-born-pass,” but the man who could so call it, must be
“—— of imagination all compact: See Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt!”
The most naked, barren, desolate prospect; a partly-cultivated island, between which and the main-land, the muddy river sweeps in a current—and a collection of Chinese hovels, which form nests for the river-pirates, who rob fast and post boats on their way to Canton and levy on the fortunes of the fishermen, compose the attractive picture, which the _Golden-sun-born-pass_ presents.
Here is the principal anchorage of the opium-hulks; and Great Britain, a party to the “holy alliance,” that said that no member of the Bonaparte family should sit on the throne of France, and yet has her legions side by side with those of Louis Napoleon—who keeps a squadron on the coast of Africa for the suppression of the slave-trade, here displays more of her boasted consistency, and covers with her flag, a traffic more iniquitous. It is nothing to England, that opium is an article contraband of the laws of China; from the enticing poison produced in her possessions, she gets a large income in revenue; her ships bring the drug to China, and smuggle it in armed vessels along its coasts; and with her protection, the vile poppy has medicined thousands to a sleep that knows no waking. She cares for syce silver, not for bodies or souls. But it must be said, that the Parsees with their “Benares” opium, and even Jonathan, though he does not fly his flag, have a share in the traffic; that some of the drug is even grown in China, and that a trade thrust upon that country by the throats of English cannon, is now connived at, and embarked in by corrupt mandarins, who share in the profits of its smuggling, while their duties require them to discover such offenders, and bring their heads under the executioner’s sword.
[Illustration: _LITH. OF SARONY & Co. NEW YORK._ CHINA.]
A considerable portion of the opium consumed in China, is produced in its southern departments. Its growth is as much a violation of the imperial law, as its introduction into the Cinque ports by foreigners is violative of treaty stipulation. The bribed mandarin governors derive a large income, by looking another way in their official perambulations when a poppy-seed field is reached; or it may be that the _papaver somniferum_ has such an effect upon them, that they go past in a somnambulic state. There being no edict requiring of mandarins a knowledge of botany, they have no desire to learn the difference between a poppy-flower and any other. Add to this the demoralized condition, or rather the moral-less condition, of a large infanticide-practising population, who once having gotten the habit, become willing victims of the drug, and its introduction and continued consumption, becomes an easy matter;—they first endured, they now embrace.