Extent and Produce of the Tea-Flantatlons in Assam. 131 



what are these compared to the vast quantity of tea, or the 

 ground the tea-plants cover, or might be made to cover, in 

 three years, but a drop of water in the ocean ? We must go 

 on at a much faster pace in the two great essentials — tea ma- 

 nufacturers and labourers — in order to have them available at 

 each garden, when the leaves come into season. 



If I were asked, when will this tea experiment be in a suf- 

 ficient state of forwardness, so as to be transferable to specu- 

 lators \ I would answer, when a sufficient number of native 

 tea-manufacturers have been taught to prepare both the black 

 and the green sort ; and that under one hundred available tea- 

 manufactiu-ers, it would not be worth while for private specu- 

 lators to take up the scheme on a large scale ; on a small one 

 it would be a different thing. In the com'se of two or three 

 years we ought to have that number. Labourers must be in- 

 troduced in the first instance to give a tone to the Assam 

 opium-eaters ; but the great fear is that these latter woidd 

 corrupt the new comers. If the cultivation of tea were en- 

 couraged, and the poppy put a stop to in Assam, the Assamese 

 would make a splendid set of tea-manufacturers and tea-culti- 

 vators . 



In giving a statement of the number of tea-tracts, when I 

 say that Tingri, or any other tract, is so long and so broad, it 

 must be understood that space to that extent only has been 

 cleared, being found to contain all the plants which grew 

 thickly together ; as it was not thought woi'th while, at the 

 commencement of these experiments, to go to the expense of 

 clearing any more of the forest for the sake of a few strag- 

 gling plants. If these straggling plants were followed up, 

 they would, in all probability, be found gradually becoming 

 more numerous, until you found yourself in another tract, as 

 thick and as numerous as the one you left ; and if the strag- 

 gling plants of this new tract were traced, they would by 

 degrees disappear, until not one was seen. But if you only 

 proceeded on through the jungles, it is ten to one that you 

 would come upon a solitary tea-plant, a little further on you 

 would meet with another ; until you gradually fotmd yourself 

 in another new tract, as full of plants as the one you had left, 

 growing abisolutely so thick as to impede each other's growth. 



