but it is worthy of note that up to the year 1736 it was imported only in small quantities and employed simply for its medicinal properties, as a cure for diarrhoea, dysentery, and fevers, hemorrhage and other ills.  It was in the year 1757 that the monopoly of the cultivation of the poppy in India passed into the hands of the East India Company through the victory of Lord Clive over the Great Mogul of Bengal at Plassey; and from this time the importation of the drug into China became a matter of great profit financially.  In 1773 the whole quantity imported was only two hundred chests.  In 1776 it had increased to one thousand chests, while in 1790 it leaped up to four thousand and fifty-four chests.  The Chinese Emperor, Keaking, becoming alarmed at its growing use and its pernicious effect when eaten or smoked, forbade its importation, and passed laws punishing persons who made use of it otherwise than medicinally, and the extreme penalty was sometimes transportation, and sometimes death.  Yet the trade increased, and in the decade between 1820 and 1830 the importation was as high as sixteen thousand, eight hundred and seventy-seven chests.  The evil became so great that in 1839 a royal proclamation was put forth threatening English opium ships with confiscation if they did not keep out of Chinese waters.  This was not heeded, and then Lin, the Chinese Commissioner, gave orders to destroy twenty thousand, two hundred and ninety-one chests of opium, each containing 149-1/3 pounds, the valuation of which was $10,000,000.  Still the work of smuggling went on and the result was what is known as the Opium War, which was ended in 1842 by the treaty of Nanking.  China was forced by Great Britain to pay $21,000,000 indemnity, to cede in perpetuity to England the city of Hong Kong, and to give free access to British ships entering the ports of Canton, Amoy, Foochoofoo, Ningpo and Shanghai.  The importation of opium from India is still carried on—­but the quantity is not so great as formerly, owing to the cultivation of the plant in China.  The Hong Kong government has an opium farm, for which to-day it receives a rental of $15,500 per month.  The farmer sells on an average from eight to ten tins of opium daily, the tins being worth about $150 each.  His entire receipts from his sales of the drug are about $45,000 per month.  This opium farmer is well known to be the largest smuggler of opium into China; and not without reason does Lord Charles Beresford, in his book “The Break-up of China,” say:  “Thus, indirectly the Hong Kong government derives a revenue by fostering an illegitimate trade with a neighbouring and friendly Power, which cannot be said to redound to the credit of the British Government.  It is in direct opposition to the sentiments and tradition of the laws of the British Empire.”  It was here in Chinatown, in San Francisco, that I was brought face to face with the havoc that is made through the opium trade and the use of the pernicious drug in eating and smoking.