396 INTRODUCTION OF TEA INTO ENGLAND. 



ingredients are employed. The Tea plant is cultivated in 

 China from about the 27th to the 33d degree of north latitude; 

 but it will flourish in regions more distant from the Equator if 

 the climate be mild and equable. It has been found growing wild 

 over extensive tracts in Assam, at the north-east of Hindostan; and 

 attempts are now being made to cultivate it there on a large scale 

 561. The history of commerce does not furnish any parallel 

 to the circumstances which have attended the introduction of Tea 

 into Great Britain. The leaves are said to have been first em- 

 ployed by the Chinese to cover the taste of their water, which is 

 in many districts brackish and unpalatable; and the infusion 

 being found to be pleasant in its flavour, and productive of an 

 agreeable excitement, the practice of drinking it gradually ex- 

 tended in those places where the water was good, and at length 

 was introduced into Europe. The leaf was first imported by the 

 Dutch East India Company in the early part of the seventeenth 

 century ; but it does not appear to have found its way to Eng- 

 land until about the year ] 650. The first historical notice of it 

 is in an Act of Parliament of the year 1660, in which it was 

 enumerated as one of the beverages sold in coffee -houses, on 

 which a duty was to be laid. That it was not then a common 

 drink, is evident from an entry in the private Journal of Mr. 

 Pepys, Secretary to the Admiralty, who says, Sept. 25, 1661, 

 " I sent for a cup of tea (a China drink), of which I had never 

 drunk before." In 1664, the British East India Company sent 

 two pounds of tea as a present to the King. In 1667 they issued 

 their first order to import tea, directed to their agent at Bantam, 

 to the effect that he should send home lOOlbs. of the best tea he 

 could get. Since then, the consumption has gone on regularly 

 increasing. In 1734, the quantity imported was about 632,0001bs ; 

 in 1768, it was nearly seven million pounds; in 1800, it was 

 twenty millions ; and during the last four years of the East India 

 Company^ charter, the average quantity imported was 31 J 

 millions. Since the abolition of the monopoly, and the conse- 

 quent reduction of prices, the consumption has increased still 

 more rapidly ; the amount imported having in some years nearly 

 reached 50 million pounds, of which above 44 million pounds 

 were consumed in Great Britain and Ireland, a quantity much 



