184 Report on the manufacture of Teat (tnd ov*thc [July 



Chingcha; Young Hyson, Uchin ; Skin-Tea, or old leaves in small 

 bits, Poocha; the fine dust, or Powder-Tea, Chamoot. 



The leaves of the Green-Tea are not plucked the same as the Black, 

 although the tree or plant is one and the same, which has been proved 

 beyond a shadow of doubt ; for I am now plucking leaves for both Green 

 and Black from the same tract and from the same plants; the differ- 

 ence lies in the manufacture, and nothing else. The Green-Tea gatherers 

 are accommodate! with a small basket, each having a strap passed 

 round the neck so as to let the basket hang on th3 breast. With one 

 hand the man holds the branch, and with the other plucks the leaf, one 

 at a time, taking as high as the Souchong leaf ; a little bit of the lower 

 end of the leaf is left for the young le if to shoot up close to it ; not a 

 bit of stock must be ga;hered. This is a very slow and tedious way of 

 gathering. The Bla« k-Tea maker plucks the leaves with great rapidity 

 with both hands, using- onty the forefinger and thumb, and collects them 

 in the hollow of the hand ; when his hand is full he throws the leaves 

 into a basket under the shade of the tree; and so quickly does he ply 

 his hands that the eye of a learner cannot follow them; nor see the 

 proper kind of leaf to be plucked ; all that he sees, is the China- 

 man's hands going right and left, his hands fast filling, and the 

 leaves disappearing. Our coolies, like the Green-Tea Chinamen, 

 hold the branch with one hand, and deliberately pluck off the 

 leaf required, then the next, and so on, by which process much time is 

 lost, and a greater number of hands are wanted. Not having a regular 

 set of pluckers is a very great drawback to us; for the men whom we 

 teach this year we see nothing of the next; thus every year we have to 

 instruct fresh men. This difficulty will be removed when we get re- 

 gular people attached to the Tea plantations; or when the natives of 

 these parts become more fixed and settled in their habitations, and do 

 not move off by whole villages from one place to another, as they have 

 of late years been doing ; and when the aversion they have throughout 

 Assam to taking service for payment, has been overcome. They seem to 

 hold this as mean and servile; preferring to cultivate a small patch of 

 ground which barely yields a subsistence. I can perceive, however, 

 that there is a gradual change taking place in the minds of the labouring 

 class of people, or coolies; for occasionally some good able-bodied men 

 come forward for employment. The generality of those that have hither- 

 to offered themselves, has been from the very poorest and the most 

 worthless in the country. In the cold season, when the men have 

 nothing to sow or reap, two or three hundred can be collected; but as 

 soon as the rains set in, all but those that have not bonds, or are not 



