18390 



Report on the manufacture of Tea, fyc. 



169 



YII. — Report, on the manufacture of Tea, and on the extent and produce 

 of the Tea Plantations in Assam. — By C. A. Bruce, Superintendent 

 of Tea Culture. 



(Presented by the Tea Committee, August 16th, 1839.) 



I submit this report on our Assam Tea with much diffidence, on ac- 

 count of the troubles in which (his frontier lias been unfortunately involv- 

 ed. I have had something more than Tea to occupy my mind, and 

 have consequently not been able to commit all my thoughts to paper at 

 one time; this ! hope will account for the rambling manner in which I 

 have treated the. subject. Such as my report is, I trust it will be found 

 acceptable, as throwing some new light on a subject of no little impor- 

 tance to British India, and the British public generally. In drawing 

 out this report, it gives me much pleasure to say, that our information 

 «and knowledge respecting Tea and Tea tracts are far more extensive 

 than when 1 last wrote on this subject ; — the number of tracts now 

 known amounting to 120, some of them very extensive, both on the hills 

 and in the plains. A sufficiency of seeds find seedlings might be col- 

 lected from these tracts in the course of a few years to plant off the 

 whole of Assam ; and I feel convinced, from my different journeys over 

 the country, that but a very small portion of the localities are as yet 

 known. 



Last year in going over one of the hills behind Jaipore, about SCO 

 feet high, I came upon a Tea tract, which must have been two or three 

 miles in length, in fact I did not see the end of it; the trees were in 

 most parts as thick as they could grow, and the Tea seeds (smaller than 

 what I had seen before) fine and fresh, literally covered the ground ; 

 was in the middle of November, and the trees had abundance of 

 and flower on them. One of the largest trees I found to be two 

 cubits in circumference, and full forty cubits in height. At the foot of 

 the hill I found another tract, and had time permitted me to explore 

 those parts, there is no doubt but I should have found many of the Naga 

 hills covered with Tea. I have since been informed of two more tracts 

 near this. In going along the foot of the hills to the westward, I was 

 informed that there was Tea at Teiueack, or near it : this information 

 came too late, for I had passed it just a little to the east of the Dacca 

 river, at a place called Cheriedoo, a small hill projecting out more than 

 the rest on the plain to the northward, with the ruins of a brick temple 

 cn it ; here I found Tea, and no doubt if there had been time to exa- 



