June i, 1885.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



02 i 



THE OUTLETS FOK INDIAN TEA. 

 Standing as it does for the greater part by far of the 

 capital embarked iu the cultivation of tea, the Indian 

 Tea Association deserves to be listened to with 

 attention when it presents its annual report on matters 

 affecting an industry wherein English money is so 

 deeply concerned. So far as mere production goes the 

 statistics of the past year are not discouraging. The 

 crop is reckoned at 62J million pounds, against 00 

 million pounds in 18S3 : in other words, about twenty- 

 eight thousand tons of tea, almost the whole of which 

 is available for export, the requirements of India oeing 

 quite inconsiderable. Ninety-eight per cent of the 

 quantity exported goes to the United Kingdom, and 

 the balance chiefly to Australia. The efforts which 

 were made five years ago to introduce Indian tea to 

 Australians, through the medium of tea-shops at the 

 Melbourne and Sydney Exhibitions, had as their 

 consequence an extraordinary opening of the Australian 

 market for the time being followed by a temporary 

 glut, which we may now hope is passing over, for the 

 exports to Australia have begun to rise again after 

 falling very low in 1883. There are reasons, however, 

 for declining to nurse any extravagant hopes of the 

 Australian market. The population of the colonies is 

 not yet sufficient to take off anv large proportion of the 

 tea which now finds its way to Euglaud, and it will prob- 

 ably not be long before Australia begins to grow tea 

 for herself. Already coffee is beiug tried in the 

 tropical districts of Queensland, and Mysore and Ceylon 

 warn us how easily coffee-planters can turn themselves 

 into tea-planters. Coffee is grown in Australia to- 

 gether with cocoa and India-rubber, the caoutchouc 

 trees giving shade to the young plants, and in this 

 way as much as three and four hundredweight of coffee, 

 worth Is 6d the pound, can be got per acre iu the 

 third and fourth years of cultivation. Speculation 

 is rife as to the locality best suited for tea, and some 

 of the river-valleys ou the eastern coast, between 15" 

 and 20° of south latitude, seem to be destined for 

 the experiment. It is, indeed, evident that Indian 

 tea will henceforward have to compete with an in- 

 creasing number of rivals. Ceylon, at our own doors, 

 is already a formidable competitor. Ihree years ago 

 tea in Ceylon was spoken of as an experiment, and I 

 now we have an export of 2i million pounds, with 

 every promise of rapid expansion. We hear of tea 

 cultivation in Fiji, and the French have opened plant- 

 ations at Noumea, from Beed which the Indian Govern- 

 ment has procured for them from Assam gardens— 

 another exemplification, periiaps, of the poetic parable 

 of the eagle whose own plume feathered the arrow 

 that laid him low. Iu Natal it has been proved that 

 tea can be made for sixpence the pound — a rate quite 

 as cheap as the average cost of production in India, 

 while eightpence a pound, it is said, will pay the cost 

 of exportation and leave a profit. 



The first desideratum for Iudian tea, therefore, is 

 a new market in some part of the globe where we 

 shall be secure against competition. For there is no 

 reason to believe that the expansion of the English 

 market will even keep pace with the increasing 

 production of tea all over the world. Fifty years 

 ago the total imports of tea into England amounted I 

 to 30 million pounds : they are now 60 million 

 pounds from India alone ; yet if we suppose the same ! 

 rate of development to continue for another fifty 

 years, who can help seeing that it will be more than 

 covered by the produce, peihaps, of countries where 

 tea is not grown at all at present, and that if India 

 is to enjoy the advautage of even a part of the in- 

 creased demand, it must be on the condition of 

 diminished cost of production ? A new market, then, 

 i* the thing really wanted in order to save Indian 

 tea from its precarious position. The Tea Association 

 seems to indicate, but iu a doubtful and halfhearted 



' manner, that something might be done towards dis. 

 covering such a market in Tibet. The subject is not 

 a new one, nor has any fresh light been cast upon 

 it recently ; but old facts have once more been brought 

 to the front by new men, and it is worth while 

 to state what they are. The Deputy Commissioner 

 of_ Kamrup is obliged to pay an annual visit to a 

 ; triangular promoutorvof British territory in the Bhutan 

 hills, which we have held as a material guarantee since 

 the last Bhutan War, and which is known to us by its 

 Assamese name of Dewangari, but the Bhutias call it 

 I Dongsam. Hither the Bhutias come, to the number of 

 some thousands in February and March, to exchauge 

 blankets, lac, and wax for the rice and brass and 

 copper ware of the plains. Moving among them with 

 an observant eye, the Deputy Commissioner noticed 

 their universal practice of solacing themselves at the 

 I close of the day with large draughts of tea, and on 

 asking for the commodity in its merchantable shape, 

 he was shown the veritable brick tea of China, in 

 blocks weighing about 44 pounds, wrapped in paper 

 bearing the Chinese mark. Such a block in Dewangari 

 was worth four rupees, though the tea is of the 

 coarsest description imaginable, and seems in fact to 

 consist entirely of prunings, the leaves being large, 

 old, and stringy, and intermingled very freely with 

 twigs. An article of at least equal goodness could 

 be prepared by Assam tea-planters from the refuse 

 of their gardens, and offered for sale at Dewangari 

 for a price considerably less than a rupee a pound. 

 The Tea Association, however, to whom one of these 

 bricks was forwarded with this suggestion, do not 

 take a very hopeful view of the matter. Appare tly 

 the making up of the tea in the brick shape is 

 just one of those little departures from established 

 custom which it is so difficult to get effected in 

 trade, but which when effected often produce such 

 surprizing results. Mr. Cooper and others have told 

 us how the thing is done; there are three k nds 

 manufactured, and that which finds its way to De- 

 wangari seems to be the poorest of the three ; the 

 leaves and clippings are trodden iuto a pit, and there 

 allowed to ferment thoroughly, ricewater is then 

 added to give the mass a glutinous consistency, and 

 it is compressed in wooden moulds with sliding ends 

 held down by a lever, considerable force being exerted 

 so that the heterogenous mass coheres closely after 

 drying ; the last process is the wrapping in paper. 

 The tea thus made has to be carried 200 miles over 

 frightfully precipitous country on the backs of coolies, 

 alter which the cost of carriage is almost done with, 

 for its subsequent passage through Tibet on the backs 

 of yaks that graze as they go is extremely inexpensive. 

 Still it costs a rupee a pound at Dewangari, while 

 the stuff it is made from is absolutely worthless in 

 tea-gardens thirty miles from that place. Any planter 

 who chooses to amuse his leisure by the experimental 

 manufacture of a few bricks can entrust them to tho 

 Deputy Commissioner of Kamrup for sale or distrib- 

 ution among the Bhutias, and it seems difficult to 

 believe that they will prove so fastidious as to persist 

 in refusing a cheaper and better article, because 

 it may not exactly correspond in all points to the 

 tea they get from Tibet. The Bhutias are not with- 

 out some experience of Assam tea already, and the 

 fault they find with it is that it is deficient in 

 twang ; it does not work up into the thick racy 

 mess which is their ideal of a good cup of tea. They 

 make tea by first boiling down a portion of one of 

 their bricks into a black decoction with an in- 

 tolerable flavour of bark and tannin ; the next step 

 is to mix this tea-porridge with butter ; boiling water 

 is then added, and the resultant liquid is churned 

 furiously for ten minutes in a bamboo churn with 

 a lid on, till it is worked up iuto a yeasty mess, 

 when it is considered fit for drinking. Kut if ordin- 



