The herald., 1896-03-02

tn a prolonged personal stuly of the
Lunis, their language and history. He
observed that he had often occasion TO
live largely upon the corn dishes OF the In
dians and felt always the better for this
simple diet and found that il gave him the
power to endure great fatigue. For weeks
he has done much walking and mountain
climbing upon a diet of corn cakes and
water, varied occasionally by a thin soup
made from ground and toasted corn. mixed
with some condensed milk. One dish es-
pecially, called in Mexico iskiate, is made
by the Indian women, who iub toasted
corn on the milestone, adding water to it,
until they produce thickened kind of
drink, which is always cool and looks very
inviting to the weary travellers it is of
herbs ground in with it. II remember,
late ono afternoon arriving at the cave of
hearhen, whose wife was making this
iskiate. The day had been extremely
fatiguing and l felt tired and at a loss
how to climb up the side of mountain be-
after satisfying my hunger and thirst with
this dish, offered by my hospitable friend,
l felt new strength and to my surprise sue
ceeded in climbing the height with but lit
tie effort. The dish, pleasant though it
be, is indieestible, and like the bean,
should be used only by those who lead &C
tive outdoor lives"
Bahadar Yung Jamsetgee, a Bengal mer-
chant who is with his son touring the
United States. gave some interesting in
formation as to opium cultivation in India.
The valley Of the Ganges produces the best
and strongest opium in the world, the stuff
that ia sold in England and the United
States being a vilely aduiterated COM
pound manufactured in Turkey and China.
The poppy seeds are sown in October or
November, and the plants are allowed to
grow six or eight inches apart from each
other and are plentifully watered until
they are about six or eight inches high,
when they are watered less sparingly.
When the plants are near Towering they
are profusely watered to increase the juice.
When the capsules are half grown no more
water is given, and the collection of the
opium begins. At sunset two longitudinal
double incisions are made upon each half
ripe capsule, passing from below upwards,
great care being taken not to punctur the
internal cavity of The capsule. These ii-
cisons are repeated every evening until
each capsule has received six or eight
wounds; they are then allowed to ripen
their seeds. The ripe capsules afford little
or no juice. If the wound were made early
in the day a cicatriX would be too soon
formed. The night dews, by their moist
ura. favor the civilization of the juice.
Ea "ly in the morning old women, boys and
girls collect the juice by scrapng it off
deposit the whole in an earthen pot, where
it is worked by the hand in the open sum
shine until it becomes of considerable
spissitude. 1t is then formed into
cakes of globuiar shape. each weigh.
ing about four pounds, and laid
further exsiccated. These cakes are COW
cred over with poppy or tobacco leaves.
and dried until they are fit for market,
About one million pounds are annually
made in the Ganges country. Two kinds
of opium are used for smoking in India
mudut and chindoo. The chief dens at
Calcutta where mudut smokers resort are
remote from the aristocratic Chowinga and
the MADAM. The smokers are quiet. we'll
behaved. even courteous. If an American
we're to stroll alone into q low saloon in the
worst quarters of Los Angeles some night to
crafty his curiosity as to the degraded vic
Tins of the national vice of alcoholism with
the view to putting an end to the in
iquitous system of raising revenue from
the sale of spirits and prohibiting alto
gether the sale of intoxicating liquors, one
can pretty closely guess what would be his
fate. He would be hailed with oaths and
curses, would be plundered, have his
Uranium crushed and be kicked into in
sensibiGty. The contrast between this
and the mudut smoker calmly enjoying his
pipe, perfectly civil and neither bestial
nor brutal. might well be humbling re-
Election for the opponents of the drug in
America, who would in India be met with
the cry, "Phy yscian, heal thyseif." There
can be no doubt that opium. judiciously
used, arrests vital decay, sharpens the
mental faculties and is very wonderful
| nerve restorative. The moderate opium
eater enjoys immunity from malarial af-
fectons, while it is distinctly valuable in
some forms of diabetes. The people of
India are on a far higher level of morality
than Englishmen or Americans: they are
sober, chaste and religious: a drunken
man is a rare sight unless
he be an Englishman or an
Americana drunken woman is unknown.
1t is in the European quarters of lndia's
great cities that sights of immortality can
be seen at their worst, and regret to say
that in this beautiful Christian city your
boys and girls cannot so to and return
from the public schools without witnessing
sights calculated to prematurely familiar
with us that to keep woman and get
drunk are the two distinguishing marks of
the Christian religion, belief which is
strengthened by the unruly conduct of the
sons, and to speak mildly, the levity
of the daughters of the wealthy Christian
missionary. Opium no doubt does harm
in some few cases of inordinate excess,
but in the east to the great majority it is,
to say the least, innocuous. Ii this be cor
rect, the feeling which prompted dis,in-
guished bishop to say that he preferred an
England free to an England sober. becomes
specially applicable to the question of
opium suppression. 1t would, hold, be
an act of intolerable despotism to place
the least restraint on freedom in such
matter, while it would be a monstrous
wrong and injustice to deprive millions of
men of one of the few, perhaps the princi-
pal, pleasures of their very cheerless ex-
istence.