Tea Planting. 121 



it on to the next man who repeats the process, and so it 

 goes down the table to the last man, who kneads the 

 crushed mass into a ball and places it carefully in a 

 basket by his side, and when the basket is full of balls it 

 is covered up and taken to the fermenting room to fer" 

 ment ; up to this stage all teas, whether green or black, 

 undergo the same process. It is in the fermenting that 

 the difference is made, the leaf for black tea being fer- 

 mented till a test ball, being broken open, shows the leaf of 

 a brown colour right through, while for green tea the 

 fermentation is checked at an early stage and while the 

 leaf is still green. When the right stage of fermentation 

 has been reached the leaf is " fired," that is, the balls are 

 broken up on large sieves, each of which is placed over a 

 charcoal fire. An experienced man in charge of the firing- 

 house decides when the tea has acquired the necessary 

 amount of twist and colour, and then draws off the sieves 

 and empties their contents. The tea process is now com- 

 pleted. All that remains to be done is to sift it, and out 

 of the heap of tea lying on the floor on the firing-house, 

 by a choice of sieves, you can turn out either " Souchong,'' 

 a black tea of full leaf without " tip," or Pekoe, a medium 

 tea with a fair amount of " tip," or " Broken Pekoe" or 

 " Broken Mixed" or any other of the numerous varieties 

 of tea which owe their difference chiefly to the absence 

 or presence in varying quantities of the " tip." The tea 

 is now ready to be packed and shipped. 



The above will give you an idea of the process. The 

 labour is light and the picking is done chiefly by women 

 and children, the men doing the heavier work and all 

 the work in the fa6lory. 



Taking wages at current rates out here, the cost of 



Q 



