MRO Wie eA AND: OL hits SER © Ml Sir, 
Some 60 years ago the industry was in- 
troduced on business lines into India and 
Ceylon, with the result that today these 
countries supply a greater portion of the 
world’s demand than does China herself. 
Antiquated methods of cultivation and 
preparation, absence of co-operation 
amongst the growers, and heavier taxa- 
tion are responsible for this decline. It 
is true that Chinese tea is in quality and 
delicacy of flavor far ahead of Indian 
and Ceylon teas, but tea-drinkers gen- 
Erallye have acquired a taste for ‘the 
rougher, dark-colored teas, and China’s 
conservative methods are killing what 
was once her greatest export industry. 
Though tea as a beverage is universally 
drank throughout the length and breadth 
of the Empire, it is by no means all 
infused from the leaves of the genuine 
tea-plant. 
In the mountainous parts of central 
China the peasants hardly ever taste real 
tea, the leaves of various crab-apples, 
spireas, and willow being commonly 
employed. The writer has drank so- 
called tea infused from the leaves of a 
great variety of plants, but bed-rock was 
reached when chips of wood of a willow 
tree were on one occasion used. The 
BRetPOuI: 
1035 
“infused tea’ was decidedly weak and 
nasty.” 
To the Thibetans and kindred tribes- 
folk tea is a necessity of life, and with 
most of their trade with China this com- 
modity is taken in barter for their wool, 
skins, gold dust, medicine, etc., and the 
Chinese carry on an extensive and profit- 
able trade with these people. The tea 
supplied by China to Thibetans is all 
grown in western China, and is of the 
roughest and poorest quality. It is pre- 
pared in two distinct ways. For north- 
western Tibet and regions around the 
Koko-nor the plants are stripped of 
their leaves and the twigs are frequently 
chopped up and pressed with the leaves 
into large bales, oval or rectangular in 
shape, each weighing 90 or 180 pounds. 
For the rest of Thibet the leaves are 
roughly sorted and graded, then steamed, 
pressed into molds the size and shape 
of a large brick. These are then wrapped 
in paper, stamped, and packed in long 
cylinders made of split bamboo. 
This brick tea for Thibet must not be 
confused with the brick tea made in the 
foreign factories in Hankow chiefly for 
the Russian market. The latter is in 
every way a vastly superior article. 
ALAND OF LITTLE PROMISE 
By Apotr L. ViscHER 
ILL the beginning of the Turco- 
i Italian war, Tripoli of Barbary 
was practically unknown to the 
average man. In fact, apart from the 
coast, the Turkish vilayet Tarabulus-el- 
Gharb ranges among the least explored 
countries of the Dark Continent. The 
few visitors to Tripoli whom chance had 
brought to that part of the African shore 
were all invariably struck by the great 
charm which lay over it. There at*last 
the lover of the East could find a land 
unspoiled by railways, manufactories, 
smoke. There was still an African reser- 
vation, and the warden of that reserva- 
tion was the Turk. 
This, however, is now a thing of the 
past. It is advisable, therefore, that 
there should be put on record some im- 
pressions of the people of Tripoli and of 
the resources and possibilities of the 
country, basing the following account on 
the personal experience that we had the 
opportunity to gain during a stay in 
Tripoli last year. 
Tripoli is not a geographical unity, but 
a collection of different countries, which 
were held together by a common bond— 
the Turkish rule. Tripolitania, or Trip- 
oli proper, and Fezzan formed together 
the province or vilayet Tarabulus-el- 
Gharb, ruled by a _ governor - general, 
