22 TEA PLANTING IN 



and winnowed, and sorted into Hyson and Hyson Skin, 

 the first being the better of the two. 



When the sorting of the teas is finished, appropriate 

 leaden-lined boxes receive them, after a final heating 

 over the fire has been given. The yet hot leaves are 

 then either shaken into position, like the green, or 

 firmly pressed down like the black, covered in, and 

 nailed up. 



It was with no small satisfaction that we viewed in 

 the various airy rooms of the adjoining warehouse the 

 piles of boxes reaching up to the ceiling, from the sub- 

 stantial plain chests that furnish to the commissariat 

 the means of supplying to the British soldier his most 

 innocuous stimulant, to the smaller and more artisti- 

 cally worked-up boxes, upon whose yellow papered sides, 

 along with other devices, the well-known initials of the 

 late Honourable John Company held a proud pre- 

 eminence. 



The comfortable sum of rupees that these chests 

 represented particularly impressed us, and visions of 

 a flourishing tea plantation, that should enable us to 

 cut parade and eschew drill, floated through our minds. 

 To the warehouse a workshop is attached, in which the 

 various sieves and baskets, and the other wicker work 

 necessaries, are made. For these light purposes the 

 bamboo is most serviceable. Here, also, the tea boxes are 

 constructed. The coarse Indian paper receives its tawny 

 yellow colour from the root of the barberry that grows 

 wild in the district. After thanking Mr. R g-< rs, 

 the Government overseer, for the trouble he had taken 



