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to opium smuggling at the time of these events. The average foreigner had no sympathy with Captain Elliot's views, nor imagined that when he ran a cargo of the drug he did anything to "stain the British character with deep disgrace." There was a sporting element about the business that greatly supplemented the sweetness of the gains derived from it. The ships carrying the opium might almost be called yachts. They were splendid little clippers, usually schooners from a hundred to two hundred tons burden, with exceptional sailing powers and heavily armed. The great value of their cargo gave them a special attraction in the eyes of pirates, and being themselves little better than pirates, they had to rely entirely on their own powers of defence, for the governments of Europe and America, though making no attempt to check the opium traffic, drew the line at exacting reparation for losses incurred by their subjects or citizens in pursuing it. It was also necessary that the opium clipper should be able to defy any forceful exercise of the Chinese laws against smuggling, and thus these vessels acquired a corsair-like character which threw a glamour over the evil they wrought. Among their owners were to be found men who in every relation of life scrupulously observed the highest canons of integrity, and this strange association of the "merchant prince" with the opium- smuggler helped materially to obscure the other-