4 
WANDERINGS IN CHINA. 
Chap, I. 
in soil, or, more likely still, in a different mode of mani- 
pulation. This might or might not be the case ; no 
one, so far as I knew, had ever visited the Hwuy-chow 
district and brought away plants from the tea hills 
there. In these circumstances I considered that it 
would be a most unsatisfactory proceeding to procure 
plants and seeds from the Ning-po district only, or to 
take it for granted that they were the same as those in 
the great green-tea country of Hwuy-chow. 
It was a very easy matter to get plants and seeds 
from the tea countries near Ning-po. Foreigners are 
allowed to visit the islands in the Chusan archipelago, 
such as Chusan and Kin-tang, in both of which the 
tea-shrub is most abundant. They can also go to the 
celebrated temple of Tein-tung, about twenty miles 
inland, in the neighbourhood of which tea is cultivated 
upon an extensive scale. But the Hwuy-chow district 
is upwards of 200 miles inland from either of the 
northern ports of Shanghae or Ning-po. It is a sealed 
country to Europeans. If we except the J esuit mission- 
aries, no one has ever entered within the sacred pre- 
cincts of Hwuy-chow.* 
Having determined, if possible, to procure plants and 
seeds from this celebrated country, there were but two 
ways of proceeding in the business. Either Chinese 
agents must be employed to go into the country to 
procure them and bring them down, or I must go there 
myself. At first sight the former way seemed the only 
one possible — certainly it was the easiest. But there 
* Since this was written I have been informed that the Rev. Mr, 
Medhurst passed through some part of this district. 
