Chap, XXII. ZEMINDAKEE PLANTATIONS. 



377 



undulating slopes there is a great deal of excellent 

 land suitable for tea-cultivation. A few tea-bushes 

 have been growing vigorously for some years in the 

 Commissioner's garden, and they are now fully 

 10 feet in height. These plants having succeeded so 

 well, naturally induced the authorities of the province 

 to try this cultivation upon a more extensive scale. 

 It appears that in 1844 about 4000 young plants 

 were obtained from the Government plantations, and 

 planted on a tract of excellent land, which the natives 

 wished to abandon. Instead of allowing the people 

 to throw up their land, they were promised it rent- 

 free upon the condition that they attended to the 

 cultivation of the tea, which had been planted on a 

 small portion of the ground attached to the village. 



This arrangement seems to have failed, either from 

 want of knowledge, or from design, or perhaps partly 

 from both of these causes. More recently, a larger 

 number of plants have been planted, but I regret to 

 say with nearly the same results. 



But results of this discouraging kind are what any 

 one acquainted with the nature of the tea-plant 

 could have easily foretold, had the treatment in- 

 tended to be given it been explained to him. Upon 

 inquiry, I found the villagers had been managing the 

 tea-lands just as they had been doing their rice-fields, 

 — that is, a regular system of irrigation was practised. 

 As water was plentiful, a great number of the plants, 

 indeed nearly all, seem to have perished from this 

 cause. The last planting alluded to had been done 

 late in the spring, and just at the commencement of 



