Cuar. XI.] MANUFACTURE OF TEA. 203 
In a fortnight or three weeks from the time of 
the first picking, or about the beginning of May, 
the shrubs are again covered with fresh leaves, 
and are ready for the second gathering, which is, 
in fact, the most important of the season. The 
third and last gathering, which takes place as 
soon as new leaves are formed, produces a very 
inferior kind of tea, which, I believe, is rarely sent 
out of the district. 
The mode of gathering and preparing the 
leaves of the tea-plants is extremely simple. We 
have been so long accustomed to magnify and 
mystify every thing relating to the Chinese, that, 
in all their arts and manufactures, we expect to 
find some peculiar and out of the way practice, 
when the fact is, that many operations in China 
are more simple in their character than in most 
other parts of the world. To rightly understand 
the process of rolling and drying the leaves, which 
IT am about to describe, it must be borne in mind 
that the grand object is to expel the moisture, and 
at the same time to retain, as much as possible, of 
the aromatic and other desirable secretions of the 
species. The system adopted to attain this end 
is as simple as it is efficacious. 
In the harvest seasons the natives are seen in lit- 
tle family groups on the side of every hill, when the 
weather is dry, engaged in gathering the tea leaves. 
They do not seem so particular, as I imagined 
they would have been, in this operation, but strip 
the leaves off rapidly and promiscuously, and throw 
