1839.] extent and produce of the Tea Plantations in Assam. 501 



to the vast quantity of Tea, or the ground the Tea plants cover, or 

 might be made to cover in three years, but a drop of water in the ocean ? 

 We must go on at a much faster pace in the two great essentials — Tea 

 manufacturers, and labourers, — in order to have them available at 

 each garden, when the leaves come into season. 



# If I were asked, when will this Tea experiment be in a sufficient 

 state of forwardness, so as to be transferable to speculators ? I would 

 answer, when a sufficient number of native Tea manufacturers have 

 been taught to prepare both the Black and the Green sort ; and that 

 under one hundred available Tea manufacturers, it would not be 

 worth while for private speculators to take up the scheme on a large 

 scale ; on a small one it would be a ditferent thing. In the course of two 

 or three years we ought to have that number. Labourers must be 

 introduced, in the first instance, to give a tone to the Assam Opium- 

 eaters ; but the great fear is, that these latter would corrupt the new 

 comers. If the cultivation of Tea were encouraged, and the Poppy put 

 a stop to in Assam, the Assamese would make a splendid set of Tea 

 manufacturers and Tea cultivators. 



In giving a statement ,of the number of Tea tracts, when I say 

 that Tingri, or any other tract is so long and so broad, it must be 

 understood, that space to that extent only has been cleared, being 

 found to contain all the plants which grew thickly together; as it 

 was not thought worth while at the commencement of these experi- 

 ments to go to the expense of clearing any more of the forest for the 

 sake of a few straggling plants. If these straggling plants were fol- 

 lowed up, they would in all probability be found gradually becoming 

 more numerous, until you found yourself in another tract as thick 

 and as numerous as the one you left; and if the straggling plants of 

 this new tract were traced, they would by degrees disappear until not 

 one was to be seen. But if you only proceeded on through the 

 jungles, it is ten to one that you would come upon a solitary Tea 

 plant, a little further on you would meet with another; until you 

 gradually found yourself in another new tract, as full of plants as the 

 one you had left, growing absolutely so thick as to impede each 

 others growth. Thus I am convinced one might go on for miles from 

 one tract into another. All my Tea tracts about Tingri and Kahung 

 are formed in this manner, with only a patch of jungle between them, 

 which is not greater than what could be conveniently filled up by 

 thinning those parts that have too many plants. At Kahung I have 

 lately knocked three tracts into one, and I shall most probably have 

 to continue doing the same until one tract shall be made of what now 

 consists of a dozen. I have never seen the end of Jugg'undoo's Tea tract, 



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