Every bank, silk shop, and hong, of any pretension whatever, throughout the city, has its opium-room, with the lamp always lit ready for the guest.

Opium-rooms are as common as smoking rooms are with us.

A whiff of opium rather than a nip of whisky is the preliminary to business in Western China.
[Illustration: OPIUM-SMOKING.] An immensely rich city is Suifu with every advantage of position, on a great waterway in the heart of a district rich in coal and minerals and inexhaustible subterranean reservoirs of brine.

Silks and furs and silverwork, medicines, opium and whitewax, are the chief articles of export, and as, fortunately for us, Western China can grow but little cotton, the most important imports are Manchester goods.
Szechuen is by far the richest province of the eighteen that constitute the Middle Kingdom.

Its present Viceroy, Liu, is a native of Anhwei; he is, therefore, a countryman of Li Hung Chang to whom he is related by marriage, his daughter having married Li Hung Chang's nephew.