woebegone, human being!  He had lost one arm in an accident during his mining days.  Chinamen in the thirst for gold had mining claims as well as Anglo-Saxons.  This desire for the precious metal seems to be universal.  All men more or less love gold; and for its acquisition they will undergo great hardship, face peril, risk their lives.  This aged Chinaman for whom there was no future except to join his ancestors in another life, was now a pauper notwithstanding all his quest for the treasures of the mines; and his chief solace, if it be comfort indeed to have the senses benumbed periodically, or daily, and then wake up to the consciousness of loss and with a feeling of despair betimes, was in his opium pipe, which he smoked fifty times a day at the cost of half a dollar, the offering of charity, the dole received from his pitying countrymen or the interested traveller who might come to his forlorn abode.  But what a fascination the opium drug has for the Chinaman, and not for him alone, but for children of other races—­for men and women who, when under its spell, will sell honour and sacrifice all that is dear in life, and even forego the prospect and the blessed hope of entering at last into the bliss of the heavenly world!  But what is opium, what its parentage and history?  The Greeks will tell you it is their opion or opos, the juice of the poppy, and the botanist will point out the magic flower for you as the Papaver Somniferum, whose home was originally in the north of Europe and in Western Asia; but now, just as the tribes of the earth have spread out into many lands, so has the poppy which has brought much misery as well as blessing to men, found its way into various quarters of the globe, particularly those countries which are favoured with sunny skies.  It is cultivated in Turkey, India, Persia, Egypt, Algeria and Australia, as well as in China.  I now recall vividly the beautiful poppy fields at Assiut, Esneh and Kenneh, by the banks of the Nile, in which such subtle powers were sleeping potent for ill or good as employed by man for deadening his faculties or soothing pain in reasonable measure.  These flowers were of the reddish kind.  In China they have the white, red and purple varieties, which, as you gaze on them, seem to set the fields aglow with fire and attract your gaze as if you were enchained to the spot by an unseen power.  The seeds are sown in November and December, in rows which are eighteen inches apart, and four-fifths of the opium used in China is the home-product, though it was not so formerly.  In March or April the poppy flowers according to the climate, the soil, and the location.  The opium is garnered in April or May, and prepared for the market.  The Chinese merchant values most of all the Shense drug, while the Ynnan and the Szechuen drugs take next rank.  The opium is generally made into flat cakes and wrapped up in folds of white paper.  It is said that it was introduced into China in the reign of Taitsu, between the years A.D. 1280 and 1295;