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tants, population in others, is, as it were, lumped. The 

 characteristics of the people, their love of father-land 

 and place of birth, caste restrictions and prejudices, 

 famines, innundations, poverty, ravages of disease, 

 and of wars all these have combined to assist in 

 maintaining in the midst of large provinces unsur- 

 passed in fertility of soil and natural capabilities 

 by any country in the world, a stagnation unknown 

 in Europe. Thus in the province of Assam, the 

 soil of which will literally produce any crop in 

 luxuriant abundance, population is not only so 

 sparse that six millions of acres are waste ; but in 

 populated districts, the people are so indolent and 

 lazy, that the productive power* of the soil are, 

 comparatively speaking, allowed to Jie almost wholly 

 dormant. And this brings me back to the Tea 

 districts of Eastern Bengal, and the immediate 

 subject of this .Review from which I have long 

 strayed, the rise and progress of TEA Cultivation 

 in India. 



Assam was once apparentlv a flourishing and 

 well populated Province. Tlie developer now as he 

 weilds his axe, frequently comes upon ruins of 

 considerable extent buried in the jungle of 

 dense forests. The remains of noble buildings too, 

 which are to be found scattered here and there, 

 attest that the people bad attained a no small 

 degree of civilization. But the province bud been 

 subject to frequent inroads from hostile neighbours 



