2 CULTIVATION AND MANUFACTURE OF TEA. 



I believe there is nothing will pay better than Tea, if 

 embarked on with the necessary knowledge in suitable places, 

 but failing either of these success must not be hoped for. 



It was madness to expect aught but ruin, under the con- 

 ditions which the cultivation was entered on in the Tea-fever 

 days. People who had failed in everything else were thought 

 quite competent to make plantations. 'Tis true Tea was 

 so entirely a new thing at that time, but few could be found 

 who had any knowledge of it. Still, had managers with some 

 practice in agriculture been chosen, the end would not have 

 been so 'disastrous. But any one literally any one was 

 ialcen, and tea planters in those days were a strange medley of 

 retired or cashiered army and navy officers, medical men, 

 engineers, veterinary surgeons, steamer captains, chemists, 

 shop-keepers of all kinds, stable-keepers, used-up policemen, 

 clerks, and goodness knows who besides ! 



Is it strange the enterprise failed in their hands ? Would 

 it not have been much stranger if it had not ? 



This was only one of the many necessities for failure. I 

 call them * necessities ' as they appear to have been so indus- 

 triously sought after in some cases. I must detail them 

 shortly, for to expatiate on them would fill a book. 



No garden should exceed 500 acres under Tea. If highly 

 cultivated one of even half that size will pay enormously, far 

 better than a larger area with low cultivation. Add, say 400 

 acres for charcoal, &c., making 900 or say 1,000 acres the out- 

 side area that can be required, and the outside that should 

 ever have been purchased for any one estate. Instead of this, 

 individuals and Companies rushing into Tea bought tracts of 

 five, ten, fifteen, and twenty thousand acres. The idea was 

 that, though it might not be all cultivated, by taking upso 

 large an area all the local labour where there was any would 

 be secured. Often, however, these large tracts were pur- 

 chased where local labour there was none, and what the 



