Oct, 1, 1899.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTUfllST. 26b 
perts, the skilled tea-tasters, whose acute and 
highly trained senses render tlieir judgment and 
appraisal unerring. A few leaves are carefully 
weighed from the muster into a shallow cup, and 
boiling water poured over them. The tea-taster 
notes carefully how the leaves unfold in the water, 
how the liquor colours and deepens to a rich, clear 
cotfee-browD, and inhales the fragrance of the es- 
.sential oil as it is borne off in vapor before he takes 
his judicial sip. He carefully analyzes its q^ualities 
for the second it rests on liis tongue, and then 
ejects the liquid, never by any chance swallowing 
it. A price is agreed upon, and the tea is brought 
in chests and thick paper sacks and dumped into 
great bins at the factory, where it is retired, or 
toasted slowly in iron pans over chaicoal fires, to 
dry it thoroughly, then sealed in air-tight lead 
cases within wooden chests, which are pariered, 
varnished, covered witii matting, and luirried 
abroad the waiting ships. The average price at 
Hankow for the first quality black leaf-tea, whicii 
is all shipped to Odessa, is about 40 Mexican dol- 
lars for eacli ninety-pound chest. Twenty-li\e 
half-chests of this first crop's pekoe leaves are sent 
to the Emperor of Russia for palace use. Several 
times it has happened tiiat the whole crop of some 
particular farm or liillside has been brought up by 
the Russians and shipped before Chinese connois- 
seurs, who would drink no other tea, knew it. At 
once they cabled to Odessa and had the tea 
bought on arrival and shipped back to Cliina. 
Twice on the Yatigtsze I used a rich and fragrant 
tea from the Keemug hills that had performed that 
journey to Odessa and return, because some man- 
darin knew what he wanted and was witling to pay 
for it. 
THE TEA-TASTEE. 
The tea-taster is king at Hankow tor the 
six weeks of his exclusive reign, and whatever 
he may do during the remainder of the year, 
he is a most rigid total abstainer during the high 
season, when every faculty of his keenest senses 
is on the alert. Although he never swallows a 
sample sip, the tea-taster's nerves and digestion 
are impaired at the end of ten or tweh e years, 
even the stimulating effect of the strong, volatile 
aroma in the tea-hongs sometimes giving retired 
tea-tasters attacks of that tea-tremeus which the 
Chinese and Japanese recognize as a disease ; 
while temperance reformers, usually green-tea 
drinkers, seem ignorant of the fact that other 
stimulants than alcohol may be abused . The 
professional tea-taster at Hankow is said to drink 
only soda or mineral waters during the scorching 
weeks of his exacting season, and when word goes 
round the settlement that such a one of the great 
experts was seen to take sherry and bitters at the 
club, it is a signal that the great tea season is 
declining, that little choice tea is being brought in. 
Then the tension relaxes, and a certain section of 
Hankow gives itself over to a jubilation and in- 
dulgence that are the scandal and byword of ihe 
other ports. Although the tea firms are all Rus- 
sians or Siberians now, the tea-tasters are English- 
men, and, for reasons not flattering to Russian 
character, it is said that the tea-taaters will 
always be English. No green or oolong teas, 
no perfumed or fancy teas, are included 
in these great summer shipments, those being 
specialties of the southern ports. Several times I 
was regaled on Pu'erh-cha, the greatly esteemed 
"strengthening tea" f rom Pu'erh Fu in Yunnan. 
It had a mildewed, tobacco, weedy flavor, a bitter 
draught which is warranted to strengthen the 
system, clear the brain, relieve the body of all 
humors and bile, and serves high-living mandarins 
a<) a course at Hamburg does European bon- 
vivants. This plant grows in the Shan States, 
and the leaves are brought to Pu'erh Fu to be 
steamed and pressed into large, flat cakes, which, 
being packed in paper only, soon mildew. The 
long, viscous leaves are probably from some variety 
of tiie wild j^ssam tea- plant, and the taste of the 
dried leaves themselves is a little like the yerba 
huena of the California foot-hills. The Chinese 
consider the Pu'erh-cha the better by age, and 
do not heed the mildew flavor. It promotes 
longevity along with its therapeutic qualities, 
and is sent regularly to the emperor at Peking. 
Despite the distinguished consideration implied, 
I should not care to have the costly herb offered 
nie again, and, with all the craze lor cures, I 
doubt if Pu'erh-cha would ever find favor abroad. 
RUSSIAN CUSTOMERS. 
The Russians buy the best and the worst, the 
dearest and the cheepest teas in Hanl;ow's market, 
the chests of choice tea going to Odessa for 
European Russia, and the compressed brick-or 
tile-tea to Mongolia and Siberia. By September 
the best leaf- teas are fired, and some tea-steamers 
are back at Hankow for second cargoes, Odessa 
ships trying to make two round trips in each 
season. After that the tea-farmers send in tlie 
bags of coarse leaves, broken and refuse tea, the 
dust from their tables, bins and floors; the factories 
have binfuls of such leavings and sweepings too, 
ancl the manufacture of brick-tea begins, and con- 
tinues until January before all such accumula- 
tions are disposed of. Tokmakoff, Molotkoif & 
Co.'s brick-tea factory, which is managed by a 
Scotchman, who invented and adapted several of 
the machines and processes employed, is the 
largest factory in Hankow, employing fourteen 
hundred workmen through the long season, and 
shipping nearly a million bricks a year, with an 
almost equal output from their factory at Kew- 
kiang. All the way to their compound the settle- 
ment is fragrant with toasting tea-leaves, delight- 
ful whiffs coming from the rows of windows at 
that end of Hankow, where waJls are higher and 
longer, and chimneys rise significantly. They 
showed us first the bins of fine dust, ground and 
sifted by wretched, sallow, greenish-hued coolias, 
whose nostrils were filled with cotton-wool to pre- 
vent their breathing in the insidious dust. Two 
pounds of tea-dust are weighed into a cloth, which 
is laid on a perforated plate over a caldron of 
boiling water and covered for a few minutes, when 
it is poured into a clumsy wooden mold, and a 
half-pound of finer dust added as a surface. The 
mold is covered, put under a screw-press, and 
clamped shut. The noise around this press is 
deafening as the heavy molds are clanged about 
on iron tables and the stone floor, and with the 
half-clothed workmen moving in clouds of steam 
from the caldron and shouting their hideous 
dialect about the dark warehouse, a short inspec- 
tion of the process satisfies. The bricks remain 
in the molds for six hours to cool, and are thea 
removed, weighed, and stacked in endless rows 
in an upper story to dry and shrink, before being 
wrapped in paper, furnished with red lables in 
Russian, anc'. packed in baskets holding seventy 
bricks each. All defective or under-weight bricks 
are broken and ground to dust again, and it takes 
heavy blows with an iron, or sharp raps against 
the stone floor, to break one of these inch-thick 
black tiles, which are nine inches wide and 
