50 NATURE OF THE SOIL. 



garden and arable soil, and the worst in a yellow 

 soil.* 



The opportunities afforded to the two British 

 embassies of seeing the tea plant were too few to 

 aid us in this inquiry. They, moreover, were not 

 fortunate enough even to enter the particular 

 districts connected with home or foreign supply. 

 Lord Amherst's embassy, especially, was remote 

 three degrees of longitude from the black tea 

 country, and that of Lord Macartney more than a 

 degree of latitude. Both routes were north and 

 west of the extensive range of mountains which 

 isolate, as it were, the province of Fokien from the 

 rest of the empire ; the transit of which mountains 

 alone occupies a three days' journey by the speediest 

 mode of conveyance, a light bamboo sedan chair. 

 Nor was either embassy within forty miles at least 

 of the nearest point of the green tea country. The 

 specimens they saw were, perhaps, with one ex- 

 ception, such as were cultivated for the domestic 

 use of the farms where they were grown, and 

 probably afforded neither good examples of the 

 plant nor of the soil. It is generally allowed by 

 the Chinese that, with the single exception of the 

 Hyson country, they employ only such ground for 

 the cultivation of the tea plant as is unsuitable to 

 more profitable culture ; and this explains why it 



* This passage in Du Halde (vol. ii. p. 221. translation) is 

 rendered thus: — "the best grows in rocky places, and the 

 worst in a yellow soil." 



