378 



TEA DISTEICTS OF CHINA. 



Chap. XXII. 



the dry weather, and to these plants little or no water 

 seems to have been given. So that in fact it was 

 going from one extreme to another equally bad, and 

 the result was of course nearly the same. 



I have no hesitation in saying that the district in 

 question is well adapted for the cultivation of tea. 

 With judicious management a most productive farm 

 might be established here in four or five years. Land 

 is plentiful, and of little value either to the natives 

 or the Government. 



The second Zemindaree plantation is at Kutoor. 

 This is the name of a large district thirty or forty 

 miles northward from Almorah, in the centre of 

 which the old town or village of Byznath stands. It 

 is a fine undulating country consisting of wide valleys, 

 gentle slopes, and little hills, while the whole is inter- 

 sected by numerous streams, and surrounded by high 

 mountains. The soil of this extensive district is 

 most fertile, and is capable of producing large crops 

 of rice on the low irrigable lands, and dry grains and 

 tea on the sides of the hills. From some cause, how- 

 ever, either the thinness of population, or the want of 

 a remunerative crop,* large tracts of this fertile dis- 

 trict have been allowed to go out of cultivation. 

 Everywhere I observed ruinous and jungle-covered 

 terraces, which told of the more extended cultivation 

 of former years. 



* The crops of this district, such as rice, mundooa, and other grains, 

 are so plentiful and cheap as scarcely to pay the carriage to the nearest 

 market town, much less to the plains. In Almorah a maund of rice 

 or mundooa sells for something less than a rupee, of barley for eight 

 annas, and of wheat for a rupee. 



