the Dutch Government, who “ farm out ” or grant
this privilege in every district to the highest bidder
From this article alone, the government obtains in
this way an income of four or five million dollars.
Opium, as is well known, is the inspissated juice obtained
from the capsule of the white poppy, Papaver
somnif&rvm. Its Malay name is apyun, which, coming
from the Arabic afyv/n, shows at once by whom
it was introduced into the archipelago; the same
people, as Mr. Crawfurd remarks, who made them
acquainted with ardent spirits, and at the same time
gave them a religion forbidding both. It is imported
from India, and the poppy is not cultivated in any
part of the archipelago. Barbosa mentions it in a
list of articles brought from Arabia to Calicut in
Malabar, and in his time its price was about one-third
what it is now. The man who sells it is obliged to
keep a daily account of the quantity he disposes of,
and this account is open to the inspection of the
government officers at all times. So large is the s u m
demanded by the government for this farming privilege,
and so great are the profits obtained by the
Chinese, who are the people that carry on most of
this nefarious traffic, that the price the Malays are
obliged to pay for this luxury limits its consumption
very considerably. When imported, it is usually in
balls five or six inches in diameter. It is then soft
and of a reddish-brown color, but becomes blacker
and harder the longer it is kept. It is slightly elastic,
and has a waxy lustre, a strong, unpleasant odor,
and to the taste is bitter, nauseous, and persistent.
To prepare it for smoking, it is boiled down to the