Excerpt from A Cruise in an Opium Clipper The Opium trade, and there is the vessel, pointing towards a moderately sized, trim-looking schooner lying at anchor in the river not far from where we were standing. She looked a perfect beauty as she lay there, with her boarding nettings triced up all round her, and her guns run out and shining in the rays of the sun, so brightly were they polished. Her booms were also swung out for the various boats to hang on to, for there was more room in the river then, than there is now. I doubt much if the increased traffic would admit of vessels having boat booms swung out nowadays. I had heard a good deal about this opium trade, one way and another. Some condemned it, while others laughed at their conscientious scruples. I was young and eager for adventures out of the ordinary way of a seafaring life, so I replied to my questioner that I. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.