Tea in the District of Kangra. 79 
the Punjaub are lying waste, partly owing to the bad manage- 
ment of former governments, and partly owing to the want of 
population. Now, security to life and property prevail. 
Natives are encouraged to settle, populate the country, and 
break up the waste lands; and not, as in former days, look 
to aggression for aggrandizement. The Punjaub is eminently 
an agricultural one, and with the impetus which has, within 
the last few years, been given to cultivation, it must shortly 
become the granary of upper India. At present the vast 
works going on, and the immense demand for foreign labour, 
tend to keep up the prices of grain ; once, however, let these 
be completed, and the tens of thousands of acres irrigated, 
which the canals are intended to do, the markets will be so 
glutted with home produce, as to exclude all foreign compe- 
tition. Even now the cultivators in the Kangra valley de- 
clare, that they export their grain at a small remunerating 
return, and the baeparees, or men who carry the grain (and 
to the credit of the authorities, be it stated, that the roads 
are in such admirable order as to admit of camels and bul- 
locks being used), complain that their trade is scarcely worth 
keeping up, owing to the small hire that they receive, caused 
by the settled and firm government prevailing in the Punjaub, 
giving security to property, and inducing vast numbers to 
look to the plough for their livelihood, instead of, as in for- 
mer days, to the sword. It, therefore, requires no foresight 
_to predict that the Punjaub will become the great granary of 
upper India, and exclude imports of grain from all. other 
quarters. Such being the case, grain will not be worth ex- 
porting from the Kohistan. This will be so far satisfactory, 
as it will greatly lower the prices in the hills, and thus en- 
able the enormous number of idle men, estimated by Mr 
Bayley, deputy commissioner, at upwards of 10,000, to get 
food at a low rate. These men, the remnants of the Sikh 
army, and of bands kept up by the petty Rajahs in the Ko- 
histan, despise the plough, and consider it derogatory to their 
caste, to be engaged in ploughing ; though, at the same time, 
‘they will willingly work with a phourah or spade. In this 
manner alone the introduction of tea into the Kohistan is 
likely to confer a great benefit on the people by ensuring 
