TEA makint; in i.vdia 47 



of eivilizatiun — no towns, no roads, no railways. 

 Practically the only imlications that there are any 

 human beings scattered over this gigantic waste are a 

 few rudely-bnill huts, and lien- and ihrn* on thr rivers 

 a priniitive-h)(>king boat. 



What a very different land is Af-sam as we find it 

 to-day, thanks largely to the tea-bush, and, of course, 

 to the tea-planters, to the inventors of tea-making 

 machinery, and, in a word, to all the pioneer forces of 

 the British-grown tea industry. This tea-land has 

 been the hub of that indimtry from the earliest infancy 

 of the enterprise ; as we wander amidst trim planta- 

 tions, travelling in comfort from place to place by river, 

 road or rail, visiting numerous hospitable English 

 and Scottish planters at their "country iiouses," and 

 being taken by our hosts over estates that keep armies 

 of labourers in constant employment, our thoughts 

 naturally turn to the difliculties that it must have btx^n 

 necessary to surmount in order to transform Assam 

 the junglo-land into Assam the first British tea-land. 



In Ceylon we had a little talk about making a clearing 

 ready for the planting of tea. Therefore your imagina- 

 tion will alreatly be at work helping you to picture the 

 Assam forests Ix'ing cut down and burnt, and having 

 their stumps extracted. 



What became of the stumps ? 



They wen* dragged away by elephants. 



PrevioiLs knowledge returns to the aid of your 

 momentarily-arrested imagination. You see seeds 

 being .sown in carefully selected plots that have been 

 specially prepared as nurseries, and such work as hoeing 

 and path-cutting Ix'ing pursued on big expanses of 

 cleared ground. 



