232 HAUNTS AND HOBBIES 



as three and a half rupees, equivalent then to seven 

 shillings a pound. 



The endeavours of the Government to introduce the 

 tea cultivation among the natives, though long continued, 

 proved entirely unavailing. The inducements held out 

 were extremely liberal. The Government offered to 

 supply seed to all who would accept it, and that without 

 charge, and also to purchase the leaves at a fair price 

 when the plants were grown, and themselves manufacture 

 the tea, but all in vain. The natives of the Doon and the 

 surrounding hills had no religious or caste objection to 

 the cultivation, but it was new, and it would involve 

 trouble ; and the profit, they thought, might not be 

 sufficient to compensate them for the trouble. So they 

 preferred to continue to till their lands as had their 

 fathers before them, to sow the same seeds and to 

 gather in the same harvests. 



Some few of the larger landowners accepted the seed 

 that the Government offered, but they did so merely as 

 an act of deference and respect. They had no intention 

 whatever of seriously undertaking the cultivation ; they 

 planted the seed so carelessly that much of it never 

 came up, and that which did they so neglected that the 

 young plants all sooner or later withered and died. 

 Others — but this was in the hills further to the east — 

 ensured the failure of the cultivation in a simpler and 

 surer manner : before planting the seeds they previously 

 boiled them. 



I endeavoured to overcome their objections by show- 

 ing them that tea would grow on the waste lands, where 

 there was at present only coarse grass and brushwood. 



