iH 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[Jan: I, 1887, 



TEA IN CHINA, 



I have within the last few days, at a friend's 

 house, come across a curious Chinese book of 

 colored plates illustrative of the growth and 

 manufacture of tea in the Celestial Empire. The 

 book was sent to my friend by a relative in 

 Canton in 1844 and consists of 24 paintii^gs on rice- 

 paper, bound in colored silk, the whole folio volume 

 weighing only some 9 oz. The first plate represents 

 the holing of the ground, and the next the seed being 

 dibbled in ; while in the third the young plants 

 are shown above ground and a man is raking the 

 soil between the rows. In the next picture, the 

 plants are somewhat larger and are being watered 

 by a man with a small wooden pail at the end 

 of a bamboo. The next picture represents a woman 

 sittiiuj on a stool before three tea bushes, from which 

 she is picking the Hush. (I believe this is the 

 universal custom, but what would Ceylon tea- 

 planters think of their coolies indulging in such 

 luxury!) Next we see a lanky 'cooly taking the 

 green-leaf from a basket, and sifting or winnowing 

 it into two heaps ; and in the next picture an- 

 other man appears to be picking out coarse leaf, 

 d'c. The next scene is a strange one : it repra- 

 sents a cooly with a heavy pestle in his hands 

 j)ounding the green leaf in a large stone mortar, 

 preparatory to the rolling by hand in a flat bamboo 

 basket, which is shown on the next page. The 

 man employed in rolling seems to have discovsred 

 something in the laaf which ought not to be there, 

 and is holding it near his eyes and gazing at it 

 with an expression of disgust : what the object is, it 

 is impossible to say. In the next picture a woman 

 seated at a table appears to be engaged in picking out 

 stalks, d'O., from the rolled tea, and in the following 

 one the tea is shown in the form of round flat cakes 

 on a basket, where they have been left to ferment. 

 On the next page we see the balls broken up 

 and a lad with a bamboo whisk stirring the leaf 

 about and adding some liquid to it from a little 

 tub; and then we see the leaf in baskets, being 

 placed on a bench to ferment for a further period. 

 The next picture is the most remarkable of all, 

 it represents a man with a shaven head and a 

 long robe, the fold of which he is holding- out, 

 gazing up at a monkey who is seated on the 

 rocks above and is grasping with one hand 

 a tea bush which the man below is requesting 

 him to throw down ! Here is a valuable hint for 

 Ceylon tea planters as a settlement of the labor 

 difficulty! In the next picture we are shown 

 a man seated at a block on which he is 

 holding with his left hand a tea branch while 

 with a; cleaver _in_ his right he is stripping the 

 leaves off. This is a strange way of gathering 

 loaf certainly. In the next page we see the tea 

 grower sack on back and balances in hand on 

 his way to sell his leaf to the trader. Then we 

 see the green leaf being packed in stone jars 

 covered with bamboo wicker, and so transported 

 by boat to the factory, the operations in which 

 we are now introduced to. The first is the firing 

 in a furnace, and then comes the tasting, the 

 taster being a regular '"masher.' The next pic- 

 ture is not one for a lover of China tea to gaze 

 at ; it shows & nearly naked cooly trampling down 

 the made tea into large chests. The next picture 

 shows the chests being filled up by a cooly with 

 a long stick in his hands ; and then the boxes, 

 nailel up and papered, are having the familiar 

 hieroglyphics painted on th&ni; the last picture 

 representating a cooly carrying one such box on 

 his slio.ikler.— D, \\. r. in Observer, 



NEW PRODUCTS IN OLD DISTRICTS. 



We were not mistaken in seeing many a chena 

 field and many a big patch, row forlorn and ne- 

 glected, which we remembered to have seen in 

 full cultivation. But on the other hand we had 

 most cheering and quite wonderful expanses of 

 the new product— tea— as green, healthy and 

 vigorous as ever its predecessor looked. To a 

 stranger "without reminiscences" there would 

 be in fact little or no evidence in these Nor- 

 thern districts of the time of depression ; for 

 estate after estate has now its tea fields 

 covering areas rapidly approaching to those 

 formerly covered by coffee, and it is difficult 

 to say whether "the new Queen" flourishas 

 better on the old " King's " fields, or on pre- 

 viously unopened land. The young tea clearings 

 on the Hatale property seem as promising 

 as the most critical of old-school Visiting 

 Agents could desire and farther on we had 

 a look at fields planted on patana and chena 

 land from tea seed at stake, than which no 

 growth could be better at two and three years 

 old. In the middle of the Knuckles we came 

 on a new estate, planted with tea, cleared from 

 patana, with a lay of land and a promise in much 

 of the soil which may well justify the proprietors 

 in anticipating a second Mariawatte. But of all 

 the cheering sights we saw, commend us to 

 the picture of old Maousakelle and its two year 

 tea on patana soil. Anything better than this 

 we have nowhere heard of in Ceylon, not even 

 in the best of the chena clearings on the 

 side of old Hantane mountain range where 

 again tea is working a very wonderful change. 

 Indeed green flourishing fields predominate 

 throughout the Hantane, Hewaheta and Nilambe 

 districts as much as in the northern group of 

 Kelebokke, Knuckles and Rangala. We are there- 

 fore quite prepared now to welcome the original 

 planters of forty years ago, should any of them, 

 dead to the island for a generation, " revisit the 

 glimpses of the moon," to spy out the nakedness 

 of their old clearings. They would simply return, 

 as we have done, saying the half had not been 

 told them and that unless they had seen for 

 themselves no one could have made them 

 believe that tea could flourish so vigorously, 

 not to say luxuriantly on old coffee, patana, 

 and chena land. "Will it last?" may be the 

 cry ; but we have no doubt Ceylon Planters will 

 answer that question after a very practical fashion 

 as time rolls on. Meantime "tea" is not the only 

 "new product" that astonished us during our 

 brief passing visit. But of "cacao" in Panwila 

 and Dambara, we must have a separate notice. 



CEYLON UPCOUNTRY PLANTING REPORT, 



COFFEE AND GREEN BUG— WHAT IS PEOVlDENCE ABO0T f 

 TEA PROPERTIES AND BUYING AND SELLING — CLEABINQS 

 ALONG THE MATALE LINE. 



20th December 1886. 

 Now that coj'ee 13 going to be trumps those in 

 these districts who b»ve any of it left regard the 

 presenc e of the bag — black or green as yon may 

 choose to call it — with increasing interest. Unlike 

 leaf disease, which resembles the poor in being always 

 with us : bug comes and goes. A bad attack of the 

 former, nay, nven a series of attacks, might be got 

 over, but a thorough inroad of bug is as near to 

 sudden death as anything I know of. A slight attack, 

 described by the innocent ae, "hero and there in 

 patches, but nothing to speak of you know," is like 

 the shadow of impeudin* doom to those who have 



