New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1853-10-15
Opium Smoking.

The following graphic description of opium
smoking and its effect among the Chinese and
adjacent Islands of India, is furnished by an
English gentleman at one time connected with
the China mission. He says:
One of the objects at Singapore that had
the curiosity to visit, was the opium smoker in
his harem and certainly it is most fearful
sight, although perhaps not so degrading to the
eye as the drunkard from spirits, lowered to
the level Of the brute, and wallowing in his
filth. The idiot smile and death-like stupor,
however, Of the opium debauchee, has something
far more awful to the gaze than the bestiality
of the latter. Pity, if possible, takes the place
of other feelings, as we watch the faded cheek
and haggard look Of the being abandoned to the
power of the drug whilst disgust is uppermost
at the sight of the human creature leveled to
the beast by intoaaietion.
One of the streets in the centre of the town
is wholly devoted to the shops for the sale of
this poison and here in the evening may be
seen, after the labors Of the day are over crowds
of Chinese, who seek these places to satisfy their
depraved appetites. The rooms where they sit
and smoke are surrounded by wooden couches,
with places for the head to rest upon, and gen.
orally side room is devoted to gambling. The
pipe is a reed of shout an inch in diameter, and
the aperture in the bowl for the admission Of
drug is prepared with some Kind of conserve,
and very small portion is sufficient to charge
it. one or two whitfs being the utmost that can
he Inhaled from single pipe, and the smoke is
taken into the lungs as from the hookah in
India. On beginner, one or two pipes will
have an effect, but an old stager will continue
smoking for hours. At the head Of each couch
is placed a small lamp, as fire must be held to
the drug during the process of inhaling and
from the difficulty of filling and properly light
ing the pipe, there is generally a person who
waits upon the smoker to perform the office
A few days of this fearful luxury, when taken
TO excess, will give pallid and baggard look to
the face; and few months, or even weeks, will
change the strong and healthy man into little
better than an idiot skeleton. The pain they
suffer when deprived of the drug, after long
habit, no language can explain and it is only
when, to n certain extent under its influence,
their faculties are alive. In the houses devoted
to their ruin, these infatuated people may be
seen at 8 o'clock in the evening in all the diff
ferent stages-some entering, half DISTRACTED
to feed the craving appetite they had beer
obliged to subdue during the day others laugh.
ing and talking wildly under the effects of &
| first pipe whilst the couches around are filled
| with their different occupants, who lie languid
with an idiot smile upon their countenances, tot
much under the influence of the drug to car,
for passing events, and fast merging to thu
wished for consummation. The last scene il
this tragic play is generally q room in the real
of the building-a species of dead -house-wher,
| lie stretched those who have passed into the
state of bliss the opium smoker madly seeks
an emblem of the long sleep to which he i
blindly hurrying