294 
WANDERINGS IN CHINA. 
Chap. XIX. 
. The Chinese manufacturers whom I had brought 
round from China were located on one of the farms. 
They had nice cottages and gardens given them, and 
everything was done which could add to their comfort 
in a strange land. On the morning I left Paorie the 
poor fellows got up early, and were dressed in their 
holiday clothes to bid me good bye. They brought me 
a packet of letters addressed to their relations in China, 
which they begged me to forward ; they also offered me 
a small present, which they asked me to accept as a 
slight token of their gratitude for the kindness I had 
shown them during our long journey. This, of course, I 
declined, while I told them how much I was pleased 
with the motives by which they were actuated. I confess 
I felt sorry to leave them. We had travelled together 
for a long time, and they had always looked up to me 
with the most perfect confidence as their director and 
friend. While I had always treated them kindly myself, 
I had taken measures to have them kindly treated by 
others, and never, from the time of their engagement 
until I left them in their new mountain home, had they 
given me the slightest cause for anger. 
I now received orders from the Government of India 
to visit the tea-plantations in the North- West Provinces. 
They have been formed in various parts of the hills 
between Mussooree and Nainee Tal, and cover fully eight 
hundred acres of land.* Generally, they are in excellent 
* The reader who is desirous of learning more ahout these inter- 
esting plantations may consult the first edition of the author's 
' Journey to the Tea-Countries.' 
