AGRICULTURAL LNDUSTRIES. 



125 



Brick-tea {Chin, Twig-kau^ Russ. Kirpitschwi-tschai). 



As has been remarked, black and green tea furnish the healthiest 

 and most important stimulant for a large part of the human race. 

 Apart from this chief use of the leaves of the tea-tree, however, we 

 have now to consider another, no less significant for a further 

 portion of human society, namely, as an actual means of nourish- 

 ment, for as such we must regard the so-called brick-tea. Its 

 preparation, in Sz'chuan, Hupeh, and neighbouring Chinese pro- 

 vinces, takes place after harvest and the operations thereupon 

 following in preparing common tea. For this purpose the rem- 

 nants and the older leaves are exposed for some considerable time 

 to steam, to be softened. Then they are pressed in tablets, in the 

 form of thin bricks, namely, 8-12 inches (20-30 cm.) long and 

 broad, and one inch (2 J cm.) thick, and kept under pressure till 

 dry and hard. Mongolians and the inhabitants of Tibet are the 

 principal consumers, to whom must be added several Russian 

 races. For use, a piece is knocked off, boiled with milk or water, 

 seasoned with butter, a little vinegar, pepper, and salt, and eaten 

 as soup. This is said not to be a very inviting dish in appearance, 

 but refreshing and nourishing, as may be supposed, since it con- 

 tains not only the essences of tea, but also the coagulating albumen 

 and the cellular substance. 



We cannot tell exactly when the cultivation of tea began in 

 China. According to W. Williams, the oldest Chinese records of 

 tea go back only to the year 350 A.u. An Arabian merchant, 

 named Soliman, who published, about 850 A.D., an account of hi.^ 

 travels in Eastern Asia, remarks that tea was the common drink of 

 the Chinese. Strange to say, Marco Polo makes no mention of it. 

 This may perhaps be explained by supposing that up to the end 

 of the 13th century the knowledge of its use had not travelled from 

 the Chinese of the South northward to the Mongolian-Tartar 

 peoples among whom the celebrated Venetian lived. Certain it is 

 that Europe received its first knowledge of tea through Jesuit 

 missionaries in the second half of the sixteenth century. At that 

 time the Jesuits in great numbers lived and laboured successfully 

 among the people in China and Japan. ^ But the first specimens 

 of the article did not come to Europe till much later (1610 A.D.), 

 and then not through the Jesuits, as might be supposed, but 

 through the Dutch East India Company, and probably from Japan. 

 In 1664 the English East India Company brought two pounds and 

 two ounces of black tea from the province of Fukien, as a present 

 to King Charles II. ; but not until fourteen years later (1678) did 

 it deem it advisable to admit tea into its list as a new article of 

 commerce. In that year it began exporting it to England, with 

 4)713 pounds as a beginning. It held a monopoly of the English 

 trade up to 1834, when the importation into Great Britain and 

 Ireland had increased to 30J million pounds. 



^ See J. P. Maffeus : " Rerum Indicarum," libro ii. p. 108 ff. 



