The small amount of opium grown in the vicinity of this city was very noticeable this season, Four years ago it was first introduced and the next year almost every other farmer had a part of his little plot of land devoted to the poppy. Walk whichever way one would, the beautiful red of all shades and the dead white of the blooms appeared; colours that are fit types of the devotees before and after taking. This eeason, however, one had to hunt to find the poppy. as so few had continued to grow it. The reason for this was probably two-fold the constant care and trouble in gathering the crude drug, and the poor yield from the thinness of the land. The rise and fall of opium-growing in this section will alike rejoice the heart of importer and missionary, but for widely differing reasons. The drug continues to pour in from the north, mostly from the region of Chiichoufu; every now and then caravans of from ten to twenty well-Inaded carts roll up to the Customs opened by the Viceroy a few years ago,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.