The steps led down into manure heaps and a piggery, into a garden rank and waste, which yet commands an outlook over mountain and river worthy of the greatest of temples.
[Illustration: THE OPIUM-SMOKER OF ROMANCE.] On March 30th I reached Tak-wan-hsien, the day's stage having been seventy li (twenty-three and one-third miles).

I was carried all the way by three chair-coolies in a heavy chair in steady rain that made the unpaved track as slippery as ice--and this over the dizzy heights of a mountain pathway of extraordinary irregularity.

Never slipping, never making a mistake, the three coolies bore the chair with my thirteen stone, easily and without straining.

From time to time they rested a minute or two to take a whiff of tobacco; they were always in good humour, and finished the day as strong and fresh as when they began it.
Within an hour of their arrival all these three men were lying on their sides in the room opposite to mine, with their opium-pipes and little wooden vials of opium before them, all three engaged in rolling and heating in their opium-lamps treacly pellets of opium.

Then they had their daily smoke of opium.