October i, 1883.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST, 



249 



Yuug Lan-tirag is a towa of tea-hongs, in a valley sur- 

 rouDLled by tea plantations on the hill-sides. The first 

 packing having been fiuished before my arrival, the sun- 

 dried leaves were being brought in the hougs in baskets tor 

 sale. There is always enough free selling to make a market, 

 but a large proportion of the crop is bespoken by the hong 

 merchants, who make advances to the growers. A tea-hong 

 is a large solid brick building on the typical Chinese 

 plan, court witliin court, covering ground measuring 500 ft., 

 by 200 it. The tea buying is carried on very rapidly. The 

 buyer stands on a raised platform, the sellers in the large 

 open court in front. Each seller hands up a sample of his 

 leaf on a small wicker tray for inspection, when the buyer, 

 without a moment's hesitation, fixed the price, writes it on 

 a slip of paper, which is handed to the seller, who is 

 equally prompt in accepting or rejecting the price offered, 

 and there is no chafliering, time being too precious. If the 

 price be accepted, the leaf is at once carried into the hong, 

 weighed, and the money paid on the nail. There is always 

 keen competition among the buying hongs, and the growers 

 are thus secured a full market price. After tlie buying 

 for the day is over, the qualities are sorted out, the leaves 

 are .slightly fire.1, and then packed away, a.s tightly 

 as hay in a stack, in dark stalls in the interior of 

 the hong, where the tea is left till fermentation cora- 

 mi nces. It is then put into the hands of the pickers, 

 women and girls, each of whom receives one katty, 

 from which they pick out the brown leaves and stalks. 

 The leaf is then winnowed to throw the dust off. The 

 fresh leaves wHch are left are gathered together and fii-ed, 

 which is the most important process of all, as the ap- 

 pearance, character, and flavour of all depend on the 

 skill and care of the firing. The manager sits up all 

 night watching his hundreds of baskets of tea slowly 

 baking over charcoal tu'es. When done to a turn the 

 charcoal pans ar'e suddenly removed, and the tea allowed to 

 cool. It IS then ready to be packed into the familiar lead- 

 Uued chests, for shipment to England. A " chop," or 

 one firing of Tea, varies from 600 to 800 chests. The 

 chests are made to order, of uniform size and weight, and 

 the tea is not weighed, but carefully measured into the 

 chests. An impression used to prevail that the tea was 

 all picked with chopsticks, but I found that it was only 

 the samples which are made up for the sale of the tea 

 that were put through this process of selection ; and much 

 labour and sorrow it entails on both buyer and seller in 

 the rejection of chops of tea for being inferior to sample. 

 Not baring visited the Indian Tea district myself, I should 

 not like to say how much of the above-described Chinese 

 practice might profitably be adopted by the Indian plan- 

 ters. But as in the course of my business, as a tea dealer, 

 b oth Indian and Chinese tea pass daily through my hands 

 I should judge from the practical results of the Indian, 

 process that the Indian planter has little to learn from 

 the Chinese in respect of the firing or manufacture of 

 the leaf. There would seem, however, to be obvious ad- 

 vantages in separating the gi'owing from the manufactur- 

 ing and packing, carrying on the latter processes on a 

 larger and more uniform scale, and at a very much less 

 cost than is possible where each small garlen has to 

 keep up its own separate establishment.— I am, sir-, youi'S 

 truly, jAiTES Innes. 



7 and 8, Idol-lane. 



To the Editor of" The Times." 

 Sir, — Your correspondent's letter of the 2Jth instant, on 

 Indian tea, will doubtless be copied by the newspapers of 

 India, and read with considerable interest by tea planters, 

 many of whom will at once admit the force of his argu- 

 ments, that tend to show how the planter bim.self can, to 

 a very great extent, put a stop to the inconvenience he now 

 complains of — viz., the taring of the chest of tea by the 

 Customs — and also, in small tea districts, the expense he 

 incurs by manufacturing tea on his own plantation. As 

 we.l might every farmer in England have a corn-mill on his 

 farm as every planter have on his plantation a factory in 

 which the " leaf," as the green leaves gathered from the tea 

 bushes are techuicidly termed, is manufactured into tea. 

 It is not, however, my object to deal with so com]>rehensive 

 a subji'ct, which can \ir. much better handled by the Indian, 

 Tea Districts Assoiiation than by one planter, hailing from 

 a very small tea district in India. I would, however, in 

 passing, point out that it is not tjie iji-eeu leaves, as stated 



by your correspondent, which ai'e sorted out, but the 

 manufactured tea, by the quicker process of sifting through 

 cane sieves, of different-sized meshes, made for the various 

 qualities of tea". I do not know, of course, what your 

 correspondent's ideas of a small tea garden may be, but 

 I have always been under the impression that in the im- 

 portant tea districts of India there were gardens of a very 

 considerable area, and that in China the gardens individually 

 bore no comparison to them, either in size or in appear- 

 ance of being well cultivated and plucked. I do, however, 

 wish to make my humble protest again.^t the idea that 

 owners of tea gardens should not ship their teas to London, 

 and, "passing over the machinery of Blincing Lane, follow 

 their lbs. of tea into the consumer's pot." Such ideas of 

 commerce may, as your correspondent states, be crude, but 

 when put into practice they often assume a very tangible 

 form of pirofit to both the producer and consumer of 

 the staple. Without in the least wishing to reflect 

 upon the mode in which English tea brokers have 

 fulfilled their duties as agents, the proprietors of the 

 far-off gardens in the hill districts of India have un- 

 doubtedly found that, what with ther inability, by reason 

 of distance, to closely watch the fluctuations of the tea 

 market in England, and the heavy cost which the employ- 

 ment of intermediate agents entails, their produce is often 

 sacrificed without benefit to themselves, as producers, or to 

 the public, as consumers. The public, which is now fast 

 becoming alive to the fact that Indian teas, pure and sim- 

 ple, especially those of the hill districts are much better 

 than the majority of China teas, was for a long time 

 allowed by interested parties to believe that the former were 

 unfit for consumption in their piu-e state, and such has been 

 the persistent misrepresentation which has accompanied and 

 followed every honest attempt on the planters' part to in- 

 troduce to the notice of the public in England an article 

 second to none of the very best produce of China, that they 

 have, in some instances, determined to establish agencie 

 of their own for the sale of their produce. They find, what 

 ever may be the cause, that under the system they have 

 hitherto pursued their tea has not received that measure 

 of support which their knowledge of its excellence and 

 purity entitles them to believe is its due. The expenses 

 incident to that system have been great, without any com- 

 mensmate advantage, and they believe that those expenses 

 re not always necessary, and, while they swallow up alls 

 agitimate profit, they also increase the cost of then- Teas 

 le the public— I am, sir, your obedient servant. 



Tea Planteh. 



TEA-BULKING. 



TO THE EDITOR OP THE "GLOBE." 



Sir, — The article on "Tea-bulking" in your issue of 

 Jidy 12th, raises the question: AVhy should tea require 

 to be bulked in London at all'i' As a matter of fact it 

 is only Indian tea that is bulked in Loudon. Chinese tea 

 is bvdked in China before the leaf is cured; and it would 

 be well for the Indian planters if they would imitate the 

 Chinese system of hongs, by which uniformity in the tea 

 chests is secured, and the necessity for biUking in London 

 consequently avoided. In India, at present, every small 

 tea-planter is also a curer, a packer, and in many cases an 

 exporter. He grows his tea in such small quantities that 

 he often has to keep one "picking'' till another is ready, 

 and then sends them both together to London. This is 

 one of the causes of the variation of quality in the tea 

 which makes bulking n(;cessary in London; as not only 

 one "picking" of tea. varies from another grown on the 

 same plantation, but the tea of each small plaHitation varies 

 from that of its neighbour. Another reason for the necessity 

 of bulking Indian tea is the variation in the wood of the 

 chests. Each planter has his chests made by the plantation- 

 carpenter, of any wood, heavy or light, that comes to hand; 

 therefore, the chests, like the tea, of one plantation, vary 

 in weight from those of another, and even the chests from 

 the same plantation vary from each other, being often 

 made of perfectly different woods. The result of all this 

 is that in the small "<la!)S," as they are called, of tea which 

 arrive in London from India, there are hardly two chests 

 exactly alike and the buyers natiir.ally demand that the 

 whole shall be bulked and repacked. Even if the buyers 

 did not require this, the Custom House would do so, other. 



