98 CULTIVATION IN ASSAM. 



drink their tea without milk or sugar. Whether these 

 people carried the tea seeds from Japan into China at a 

 remote period, or found it in China, and carried it with 

 them in their progress westward, is hard to say. Gibbon 

 mentions the Shans and their eruptions, in his history, 

 to the westward. The appearance of the tea plants in 

 the different localities west of China would impress the 

 belief, that it has been always indigenous there, being 

 found in the deepest forests, where man could not have re- 

 sided for centuries past. Therefore, if it was man, man's 

 profligacy has exterminated him, and Providence has pre- 

 served the plant. Again, if it was conveyed by water, 

 and squirrels and birds helped to convey it miles from 

 that water, and to places some three hundred feet above 

 the reach of water, it must have taken an immense 

 time, for large districts of country frequently divide one 

 tea locality from another. Assam country is marked on 

 the later maps of the world very irregularly. The Sing- 

 phoo and Camptee countries, or Naga country, find no 

 place on them. In the Singphoo and Naga countries the 

 best tea is found. Down lower, i. e., to the westward, 

 in the valley of Assam, the plant is inferior ; the leaf is 

 coarse, the tree stunted, and never reaches one-third 

 the size it does in the abovenamed countries. The East 

 India Company cultivated a baree (so called in Assam), 

 or plantation, called " Chubwah,'' in the valley of As- 

 sam ; the produce was good, being 320 Ibs. the average 

 per acre, but the leaf had an unpleasant, oily flavor about 

 it. The company has given it up. All the tea plants 

 along the Tingri river were inferior, and poor sterile 

 plants ; and the teas the Assam Company produced are of 

 very little superiority to the present teas of commerce. 



