26 TEA 



While our guide is talking business with one of his 

 assistants, I want to tell you about the first steps that 

 are taken to transform a tract of wild country into 

 a tea-plantation. In many parts of the world, besides 

 Ceylon, the virgin lands suitable for tea cultivation 

 are covered with jungle — the tea-clad hills by which 

 you are now surrounded were once occupied by forests. 

 Whenever a tract of such land is going to be put under 

 tea, a clearing has to be made. First the undergrowth 

 is cut, then the trees are felled. When these prepara- 

 tions are complete, a light is put to the great mass of 

 unwanted vegetation. A big bonfire is soon raging, 

 and when this has burnt itself out, the jungle tract 

 has given place to a clearing that is strewn with 

 charred stumps and a wreckage of trunks. When the 

 clearing has had time to cool, stumps are extracted, 

 and hoeing and path-cutting are begun. Paths are 

 sometimes narrow tracks, along which it would be 

 difficult for two people to walk abreast ; sometimes 

 they are wide enough to be worthy the name of road. 

 The narrow ones divide the land into plots and do a 

 little towards helping people to move about ; the 

 broader ones also serve as boundaries, provide accom- 

 modating means of access, and are sometimes capable 

 of being used for transport. The width of such a path 

 depends very much on the nature of the country it has 

 to traverse. For instance, the difficulties of making 

 tracks on this estate, which is situated at an elevation 

 of from 3,200 to 6,500 feet, must have been very great, 

 as you will soon be realizing when we start to chmb 

 the hills ; so arduous is a long walk up the steep paths 

 which corkscrew a beaten track across them, that our 

 kindly host has ordered four sturdy men to be in attend- 



