March 1, 1900.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
587 
passenger liner, the ''Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse," 
woald have her cargo space entirely filled 232 times 
over were she engaged transporting it. To put it 
another way, the quantity of dry Tea leaves is suffi- 
cient to make an infusion of 28,000,000,000 litres of 
liquid Tea, or 100,000,009,000 ordinary tea-cups, being 
one for each day of the year for every five persons 
of the present estimated population of the entire 
world. 
The Southern Hemisphere ranks lightly in the 
matter of population, and its Tea consumers live 
south of the topic of Capricorn in South Africa and 
Australia ; but if they are few relatively they consume 
heavily, the average consumption per head in Australia 
being nearly 4 kilogrammes per annum. 
In the Northern Hemisphere (again excluding the 
races who consume their own produce) the material 
consumption of Tea is in regions lying 40 degrees 
north and above it, but here there is an interesting 
sub-divison to be made. In the United States and 
Canada, in some posticus of Europe and of Asia, 
and along the north of Africa there is a free use 
made of green or unfermentrd Teas with pale pun- 
gent infusions. The demand for such, as a general 
rule, lies principally in lower latitudes, while the 
further north the consumer lives he seems to re- 
quire more of the black or fermented Tea of India, 
Ceylon or China, with the dai-k, thick, heavy liquor 
its infusion produces. 
Great Britain and Ireland take much the largest 
total of imports, the quantity in 1898 being 107,000,000 
kilogrammes, but per head this only amounts to 
2 65 kilogrammes per annum of the population, or 
a good deal less than is taken by the British Colo- 
nies in Australasia. 
Next to Great Britain comes Russia as a con- 
sumer of 42,000,000 kilogrammes, but that only 
represents about "SI kilogramme for each of the 
population, the poverty and not the will of the people 
probablv accounting for the small fi^;ure, as they 
are really great users of Tea, but take it exceedingly 
weak, and draw the spent leaves until no colouring 
matter is left in them. 
The United States is a large consumer in point 
of total — 31,000,000 kilogrammes, but this is only 
'41 kilogramme per annum for each of the popula- 
tion, although she United States people are great 
coffee drinkers, taking 5 kilogrammes per head per 
annum of coffee. Besides, the population is of such 
a composite character that it includes many people 
not by descent Tea drinkers. 
Except Canada, which follows the customs of its 
mother country and sister colonies by consuming 
about 2 kilogrammes per head per annum, and 
Holland, which takes roughly | kilogramme per head 
there is no other country whose consumption, either in 
total or per head calls for special notice. 
(8) The Principal Trade Koutes fob Transit 
is perhaps for geographers the most interesting 
section of this subject. 
In the absence of authentic knowledge as to the 
early history of Tea cultivation, and of the origin 
and extension of the tea-drinking habit, we may take 
it there was little or no foreign trade in the article 
until the Dutch carried small quantities of it to 
Europe. 
Probably some left the North of China in cara- 
vans as it does to this day, and there may have 
been some trade done with Mongolia and possibly 
Siberia, but there is no record of it ever having 
been brought to Wisby in Gothland, the great mart 
for Oriental produce during the 11th and 12th cen- 
turies. There is also no reference made to Tea com- 
merce or to Tea drinking in the travels of Marco Polo, 
so he probably either did not observe the habit, or 
if he did it did not strike him as worthy of notice. 
Starting with the introduction above referred to 
in the 16th century, the use of Tea in England 
made slow progress, but a public Teahouse was 
opened in London in 1657, and in 1678 the import 
to the Honourable East India Company was 2,138 
kilogrammes, 
A century later it reached 2,600,000 kilogrammes 
per annum, and early in this century the figure was 
lOi millions, but that represented the supply of 
many countiies besides England., as London was 
then, and until recently, the common warehouse 
and markad for the world, and England the com- 
mon carrier. 
Throughout the century, fairly steady and rapid 
progress has been shown — especially in its earlier 
periods — in the trade from China, which reached its 
maximum in 1879. And it is here that some of 
the romance of commerce comes in. 
As the trade grew in importance, the advantages 
of rapid transit for the Tea of New Season's pro- 
duction began to be appreciated, and the slow and 
stately progress of the old East Indiaman grew out 
of date. A type of vessel specially designed for the 
rapid oarr-ing of Tea from China to England via 
the Cape of Good Hope, was introduced, known as 
the " China Clipper," and the competition was always 
keen as to which ship should make the most rapid 
passage. This culminated in the year 1866, when nine 
ships sailed almost simultaneously from Poochow, 
three of them crossing the bar in company. Those 
three were all built by the same builders in Greenock, 
and came in ahead of all the others, making the 
long voyage of fully 16,000 miles in 99 days. They 
each docked in a separated dock in London upon 
the same day, and all within two hours of each 
other. The two leading ships had not seen each other 
for 70 days and met off the lizard, from which point 
they ran a neck and neck race before a strong 
westerly wind, with every rag of canvas set. 
The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 soon changed 
the course of all trade with the East, and in a few 
years the sending of Tea per sailing ship round the 
Cape of Good Hope, was a thing of the past. Rom- 
ance was no more, although there was extreme com- 
petition in building steamers with great power and 
speed to land their cargoes rapidly by the new route. 
This culminated in 1882, when the S.S. "Stirling 
Catetle " made the phenomenal run for those times, 
of 28 days from Woosung to Loudon. 
But England, which formerly supplied almost every- 
thing to her own colonies and to many foreign coun- 
tries besides, has under the modified conditions of 
abundant steam tonnage everywhere, become less and 
less of a distributive country. Consequently, direct 
shipments are made now from the countries of prb- 
duction to those of consumption. America gets its 
Tea largely through its western sea-board from China, 
Japan, Ceylon and India, while not a little is reach- 
ing it of recent years by steamers running direct 
from those countries via the Suez Canal to New York. 
The Australian demand is fed by steamers from 
Chinese ports, from Calcutta and Colombo. 
The extensive Russian trade is still done in its 
major part by overland transit, by caravan and partly 
by river and railroad, and this, next to tlie transit 
to London, represents much the laraiest volume of 
Tea traffic passing in one channel. For the purpose 
of this trade, the greater portion of the Tea supply 
is compre.^sed into what is termed Brick Tea, the 
Bricks being flat tablets weighing about one kilo- 
gramme each. The supplies are packed and pre- 
pared at various Tea ports in China, and concen- 
trated at Tientsin, from where they are despatched. 
An enormous traffic with Siberia takes place in these, 
and the baskets into which they ire made up are 
sent by camel caravans out of the Kalian Gate of 
the Great Wall through Manchuria or Mongolia to 
Kiakhta, and thence distributed through Siberia. In 
some cases the shipments are made by sea to Niko- 
laevsk, and thence by water up the Amur River. 
One of the most interesting developments of modern 
trade — in which Tea is an important factor— is the 
opening up of traffic through the Kara Sea into the 
Obi and Yenisei Rivers, with which the name of 
Captain Wiggins has been associated. By this route 
for several years past considerable quantities of Brick 
Tea have been conveyed entirely by water from 
Chinese ports with transhipment in London to 
steamers prooeeding up the Gulf of Obi to Tiumen 
