“Sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes,
That comes to all.”——Milton.
The night side of opium-eating and smoking must be seen, as well as the bright and sunny day, before we lavish upon it encomiums, such as some of its votaries have indulged in. There may be a paradise to which the Theriaki can rise, but there is also an abyss into which he may fall. Lord MacCartney informs us that the Javanese, under an extraordinary dose of opium, become frantic as well as desperate. They acquire an artificial courage; and when suffering from misfortune and disappointment, not only stab the objects of their hate, but sally forth to attack in like manner every person they meet, till self-preservation renders it necessary to destroy them. As they run they shout Amok, amok, which means kill, kill! and hence the phrase running a muck. The practice of running amok is hardly known at Pinang or any of the three Straits settlements. Captain Low did not recollect more than two instances at that place, including Province Wellesley, within a period164 of seventeen years, and the last he had heard of, which took place on shore at Singapore, was many years ago. A man ran amok—or, as the Malays term it, meng amok. He had gambled deeply, it was said, and had killed one or more individuals of his family. He next dosed himself with opium and rushed through the streets with a drawn kris or dagger in his hand, and pursued by the police. Major Farquhar, the then resident, hearing the uproar, went out of his house, where the infuriated man, who was just about to pass it, dashed at him, and wounded him in the shoulder; but a sepoy, who was standing as sentry at the door, received the desperado on his bayonet at the same instant, and prevented a second blow.
 
Captain Beeckman was told of a Javanese who ran a muck in the streets of Batavia, and had killed several people, when he was met by a soldier, who ran him through with his pike. But such was the desperation of the infuriated man, that he pressed himself forward on the pike, until he got near enough to stab his adversary with a dagger, when both expired together.
 
But the worst Pandemonium which those who indulge in opium suffer, is that of the mind. Opium retains at all times its power of exciting the imagination, provided sufficient doses are taken; but when it has been continued so long as to bring disease upon the constitution, the pleasurable feelings wear away, and are succeeded by others of a very different kind. Instead of disposing the mind to be happy, it acts upon it like the spell of a demon, and calls up phantoms of horror and disgust. The fancy, still as powerful, changes its direction. Formerly it clothed all objects with the light of heaven—now it invests them with the attributes of hell. Goblins, spectres, and every kind of distempered vision haunt the mind, peopling165 it with dreary and revolting imagery. The sleep is no longer cheered with its former sights of happiness. Frightful dreams usurp their place, till at last the person becomes the victim of an almost perpetual misery.
 
The truth of all this is acknowledged by De Quincey, when writing of the pains of opium. Almost every circumstance becomes transformed into the source of terror. Visions of the past are still present in dreams, but not surrounded by a halo of pleasure any longer. The outcast Ann and the wandering Malay come back to torment him with their continued presence. All this is told in language so graphic, that it would be almost criminal to attempt its description in any other. The Dream of Piranesi is cited as a type of those he now suffered:——“Many years ago, as I was looking over Piranesi’s ‘Antiquities of Rome,’ Coleridge, then standing by, described to me a set of plates from that artist, called his ‘Dreams,’ and which record the scenery of his own visions during the delirium of a fever. Some of these represented vast Gothic halls, on the floor of which stood mighty engines and machinery—wheels, cables, catapults, &c.—expressive of enormous power put forth, or resistance overcome. Creeping along the sides of the walls, you perceived a staircase; and upon this, groping his way upwards, was Piranesi himself. Follow the stairs a little farther, and you perceive them reaching an abrupt termination, without any balustrade, and allowing no step onwards to him who should reach the extremity, except into the depths below. Whatever is to become of poor Piranesi! At least, you suppose that his labours must now in some way terminate. But raise your eyes, and behold a second flight of stairs still higher, on which again Piranesi is perceived, by this time standing on the very brink of166 the abyss. Once again elevate your eye, and a still more aerial flight of stairs is descried; and there again, is the delirious Piranesi, busy on his aspiring labours; and so on, until the unfinished stairs and the hopeless Piranesi both are lost in the upper gloom of the hall. With the same power of endless growth and self-reproduction did my architecture proceed in dreams. In the early stage of the malady, the splendours of my dreams were, indeed, chiefly architectural, and I beheld such pomp of cities and palaces as never yet was beheld by the waking eye, unless in the clouds. From a great modern poet, I cite the part of a passage which describes as an appearance actually beheld in the clouds, what, in many of its circumstances, I saw frequently in sleep:——
 
“‘The appearance, instantaneously disclosed,
Was of a mighty city—boldly say
A wilderness of building, sinking far
And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth,
Far sinking into splendour without end!
Fabric it seem’d of diamond and of gold,
With alabaster domes and silver spires,
And blazing terrace upon terrace, high
Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright,
In avenues disposed; there, towers begirt
With battlements, that on their restless fronts
Bore stars—illumination of all gems!
By earthly nature had the effect been wrought
Upon the dark materials of the storm
Now pacified; on them, and on the coves
And mountain-steeps and summits, whereunto
The vapours had receded—taking there
Their station under a cerulean sky.’”
Further confessions describe the characteristics of some of these opiatic visions in connection with tropical lands.167 “Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical sunlights, I brought together all creatures—birds, beasts, reptiles; all trees and plants, usages and appearances, that are found in all tropical regions, and assembled them together in China or Hindostan. From kindred feelings, I brought Egypt and her gods under the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at by monkeys, by paroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the summit, or in secret rooms. I was the idol—I was the priest—I was worshipped—I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia—Vishnu hated me—Seeva lay in wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris. I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. Thousands of years I lived, and was buried in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers, at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed with cancerous kisses by crocodiles, and was laid, confounded with all unutterable abortions, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud.”
 
Again he says:168 “The cursed crocodile became to me the object of more horror than all the rest. I was compelled to live with him, and (as was always the case in my dreams,) for centuries. Sometimes I escaped, and found myself in Chinese houses. All the feet of the tables, sofas, &c., soon became instinct with life; the abominable head of the crocodile, and his leering eyes, looked out at me, multiplied into ten thousand repetitions; and I stood loathing and fascinated. So often did this hideous reptile haunt my dreams, that many times the very same dream was broken up in the very same way. I heard gentle voices speaking to me (I hear everything when I am sleeping), and instantly I awoke; it was broad noon, and my children were standing, hand in hand, at my bedside, come to show me their coloured shoes, or new frocks, or let me see them dressed for going out. No experience was so awful to me, and at the same time so pathetic, as this abrupt translation from the darkness of the infinite to the gaudy summer air of highest noon, and from the unutterable abortions of miscreated gigantic vermin, to the sight of infancy and innocent human creatures.”
 
And yet again: “Somewhere, but I knew not where—somehow, but I knew not how—by some beings, but I knew not by whom—a battle, a strife, an agony was travelling through all its stages—was evolving itself like the catastrophe of some mighty drama, with which my sympathy was the more insupportable, from deepening confusion as to its local scene, its cause, its nature, and its undecipherable issue. I had the power, and yet had not the power to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself to will it; and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. ‘Deeper than ever plummet sounded,’ I lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the passion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake—some mightier cause than ever yet the sword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms, hurryings to and fro, trepidations of innumerable fugitives, I knew not whether from the good cause or the bad; darkness and lights; tempest and human faces; and at last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were worth all the world to me; and but a moment allowed, and clasped hands, with heart-breakings, partings, and then—everlasting farewells! And with a sigh such as the caves of hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of Death, the sound was reverberated—everlasting farewells! And again and yet again, reverberated—everlasting farewells!
 
169
 
“And I awoke in struggles and cried aloud, ‘I will sleep no more!’”
 
These visions, and those of a like character, in which the Malay and the outcast girl appear and re-appear, are almost repeated again in a work of more recent years, the production of another mind and of a widely different character. Whoever has read Kingsley’s “Alton Locke,” cannot fail to have been struck with the vivid opium-like dreams which pass through the brain of the hero when struck down by fever. One could almost imagine that its author had himself suffered some of the fearful experiences which De Quincey narrates. In these the place once occupied by the two persons above named, are usurped by the cousin and Lillian; change the names, and apart from the intimate connection of the two with each other, one could almost believe himself reading a continuation of those dreams which an unfortunate accident prevented the English opium-eater giving to the world.
 
“I was wandering along the lower ridge of the Himalaya. On my right the line of snow peaks showed like a rosy saw against the clear blue morning sky. Raspberries and cyclamens were peeping through the snow around me. As I looked down the abysses I could see far below, through the thin veils of blue mist that wandered in the glens, the silver spires of giant deodars, and huge rhododendrons, glowing like trees of flame. The longing of my life to behold that cradle of mankind was satisfied. My eyes revelled in vastness, as they swept over the broad flat jungle at the mountain foot, a desolate sheet of dark gigantic grasses, furrowed with the paths of the buffalo and rhinoceros, with barren sandy water courses, desolate pools, and here and there a single tree, stunted with malaria, shattered by mountain floods; and far170 beyond the vast plains of Hindostan, enlaced with myriad silver rivers and canals, tanks and rice fields, cities with their mosques and minarets, gleaming among the stately palm-groves along the boundless horizon. Above me was a Hindoo temple, cut out of the yellow sandstone. I climbed up to the higher tier of pillars among monstrous shapes of gods and fiends, that mouthed and writhed and mocked at me, struggling to free themselves from their bed of rock. The bull Nundi rose and tried to gore me; hundred-handed gods brandished quoits and sabres around my head; and Kali dropped the skull from her gore-dripping jaws to clutch me for her prey. Then my mother came, and seizing the pillars of the portico, bent them like reeds; an earthquake shook the hills—great sheets of woodland slid roaring and crashing into the valleys. A tornado swept through the temple halls, which rocked and tossed like a vessel in a storm: a crash—a cloud of yellow dust which filled the air—choked me—blinded me—burned me—
 
“And Eleanor came by and took my soul in the palm of her hand, as the angel did Faust’s, and carried it to a cavern by the sea-side and dropped it in; and I fell and fell for ages. And all the velvet mosses, rock flowers, and sparkling spars and ores, fell with me, round me, in showers of diamonds, whirlwinds of emerald and ruby, and pattered into the sea that moaned below and were quenched; and the light lessened above me to one small spark, and vanished; and I was in darkness, and turned again to my dust.
 
“Sand—sand—nothing but sand! The air was full of sand, drifting over granite temples, and painted kings and triumphs, and the skulls of a171 former world, and I was an ostrich, flying madly before the simoon wind, and the giant sand pillars, which stalked across the plain hunting me down. And Lillian was an Amazon queen, beautiful, and cold, and cruel; and she rode upon a charmed horse, and carried behind her on her saddle, a spotted ounce, which was my cousin; and, when I came near her, she made him leap down and course me. And we ran for miles and for days through the interminable sand, till he sprang on me, and dragged me down. And as I lay quivering and dying, she reined in her horse above me, and looked down at me with beautiful pitiless eyes; and a wild Arab tore the plumes from my wings, and she took them and wreathed them in her golden hair. The broad and blood-red sun sank down beneath the sand, and the horse and the Amazon and the ostrich plumes shone blood-red in his lurid rays.
 
172
 
“I was a baby ape in Borneon forests, perched among fragrant trailers and fantastic orchis flowers; and as I looked down, beneath the green roof, into the clear waters, paved with unknown water-lilies on which the sun had never shone, I saw my face reflected in the pool—a melancholy, thoughtful countenance, with large projecting brows—it might have been a negro child’s. And I felt stirring in me, germs of a new and higher consciousness—yearnings of love towards the mother ape, who fed me, and carried me from tree to tree. But I grew and grew; and then the weight of my destiny fell upon me. I saw year by year my brow recede, my neck enlarge, my jaw prot............