46 TEA 



to make straight for Assam. Not only are we drawn 

 there first because it has the largest plantation area to 

 be found in any tea-producing region of India, but 

 because it can provide us with the new experience of 

 seeing tea-bushes flourishing on plains. The situation 

 and surroundings of the plants will furnish a fresh 

 spectacular entertainment, and we shall get a general 

 idea of the special difficulties that have to be contended 

 with in the cultivation of tea on lowlands. 



Assam proper is a part of the political province known 

 as Eastern Bengal and Assam. Let us take a bird's- 

 eye view of that province as a whole. 



An enormous triangle, with its apex to the north- 

 east, has upper and lower sides consisting of mountains 

 and hills, and between them is a depression, which 

 deepens and widens, merges into a base of waterways, 

 and constitutes the body of that triangle. Obliquely 

 through the midst of the depression runs a mighty 

 river, the Brahmaputra, which is joined in its course by 

 numerous streams, broad and narrow, and which in its 

 turn joins the mighty Ganges and helps to form the 

 great Bengal delta. The whole triangular body of this 

 province is thus covered with a network of water- 

 courses. And many of the large, irregular-shaped 

 meshes of that network are occupied by tea-gardens. 



The largest groups of such meshes are in Assam 

 proper, which was a separate province until 1905.* 



Here, now, is a picture of Assam in the not-long-ago 

 days when the tea-plant was discovered growing wild 

 there. The meshes are occupied by jungle, many of 

 them by jungle-swamp. Nowhere are there any signs 



* At the Delhi Durbar (1911) Assam was again made a separate 

 province. 



