The Hong Kong government has an opium farm, for which to-day it receives a rental of $15,500 per month.

The farmer sells on an average from eight to ten _tins_ of opium daily, the tins being worth about $150 each.

His entire receipts from his sales of the drug are about $45,000 per month.

This opium farmer is well known to be the largest smuggler of opium into China; and not without reason does Lord Charles Beresford, in his book "The Break-up of China," say: "Thus, indirectly the Hong Kong government derives a revenue by fostering an illegitimate trade with a neighbouring and friendly Power, which cannot be said to redound to the credit of the British Government.

It is in direct opposition to the sentiments and tradition of the laws of the British Empire." It was here in Chinatown, in San Francisco, that I was brought face to face with the havoc that is made through the opium trade and the use of the pernicious drug in eating and smoking.
I was told that Europeans and Americans sometimes sought the opium-joints for the purpose of indulgence in the vice of smoking.
Even women were known to make use of it in this way.