The Daily Herald

Opium Harvest.—Having passed the plain of locusts, I came to a plain of poppies. The greatest part of the opium used in Europe is brought from this place,* and poppies are every where cultivated. It was now just the opium harvest, and the people were all in the fields gathering it. I went in among them and saw the process, which is very simple.—When the flower falls off and the capsule or seed vessel is formed, they go in the evening into the plantation, and with a hooked knife they make a circular incision round the capsule; from this exudes a white milky juice, which being exposed next day to the heat of the sun, concretes into a dark brown mass, which is the crude opium of our shops. On the next and several succeeding evenings, they come and scrape this off, as long as the plant continues to exude it; this is called by the Turks measlac, and by the Greeks opon, which literally signifies juice, and hence our name of opium. The opium sent to Europe is always adulterated. They boil down the poppy heads with other narcotic plants, and having inspissated the juice, wrap it up in poppy leaves, and so send the impure mass in cakes for our use. The pure measlac, gathered as I saw it, they generally keep for their own use, when they intend to make kef.t The word kef implies an undefinable sensation of pleasure, and so is untranslatable. When a Turk wishes to produce it, he takes a drachm of opium as an Irishman takes a drachm of whiskey; he then adds a drink of water, and throwing himself on his divan, he is in a few minutes rapt in Elysium. The effects, as described by De Tott, are here unknown, though perhaps the use is as general as ever. Indeed our host at Yeni Shehr had affirmed, that as the people were prohibited the use of saraf and raki, (wine and spirits,) it was but reasonable they should indulge in something else; and he informed me of one boy who took a Turkish drachm every hour without any apparent injury, a quantity which no European constitution could bear; and if his report be true, there must be something in the constitution of an Asiatic Turk which resists its deleterious effect. The people here who use it to what we should consider a fearful excess, are certainly a remarkably healthy, well-looking race.

Walsh's Constantinople.

*Near Oicaea, in Asia Minor

tThis is a term by which the Turks express any festivity, but particularly the exhilarating effects of the drug.