580 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST, 
[March 1, 1902. 
some of these labor under the disadvantage of supply 
exceeding demand, the market becoming easily over- 
stocked. 
Cocoa, Liberian coffee, and cinchona will only 
pay to grow under certain conditions of climate and 
soil, and therefore could not be considered a satis- 
fictory sub'^titute for the defunct cofifee tree. Ths 
great substitute however was discovered. Difficulties 
were overcome, dead coffee trees were sawn down 
or the roots grubbed up to make room for the new 
seedlings. 
Thousands of acres of jungle useless for growing 
the old product were promptly felled and planted 
up with the new. No land seemed to be too high 
or too low to accommodate the tea plant, no soil 
too rich or too poor to produce a luxuriant crop of 
tea. From the year 1882 the whole aspect of the 
island was changed. Huge tracts of land were opened 
up and factories built. 
In the early days of tea planting the manufac- 
ture was entirely carried out by hand. In oouise of 
time however this was discovered to be inadequate, 
and machinery of all sorts and sizes was resorted 
to. The nett result has been that Ceylon hand in 
hand with India has practical'y rushed China tea out 
of British consumption. 
The three great growing centres of tea are China, 
India and Ceylon. British subjects should without 
doubt deal in preference with the two latter vaiher 
than with the former, if alone on patriotic grounds ; 
and thay have loyally done so, but the principal 
cause of China's defeat upon British territory has 
resulted from an economical motive, it was discovered 
that the British-grown teas go very much further 
than Cliina. That is to say, tmo spoonfuls of India 
or Ceylon tea provide as many cups of teas as three 
spoonfuls of China, 
The London Custom Report says :— 
''From the information which has been afforded us 
on the subject, we believe that we make a moderate 
estimate in assuming that Indian tea goes half as 
far again as China tea, so far as depth of colour 
and fullness (not delicacy of flavour) are concerned. 
Thus 1 lb, of Chinese tea produces ,5 gallons of 
tea of a certain depth of colour and fullness of fla- 
vour. 1 lb. of Indian tea will produce 7* gallons 
of a similar beverage. " 
This report clearly proves that there is a direct 
saving in the use of British-grown teas. Surely a 
B.xving of i or 33% should appeal to the econo- 
mical Swiss housewife. 
" Demand controls supply, and it will only be when 
the small purveyor finds that his customers will no 
longer drink the China rubbish they have hitherto 
tolerated, that the great change will take place, ex- 
actly in the same way as it did many years ago in 
England. 
In point of fact the reform will take place when 
the Swiss tea dealer comes to have mote faith in 
Engli/ih houses than he has in those belonging to 
Hamburg Jews. 
Another great argument in favour of British-grown 
teas is the extreme cleanliness observed in their 
manufacture. Any stranger may see the whole pro- 
cess from the beginning to the end, the plucking of 
the leaf, the weighing of the eame at the store, the 
withering at the factory, the rolling, the fermen- 
tition, the roaming and sifting of the manufactured 
Isaf, the packing in lead lined cases, and - if he so 
chooses he can see the cases placed in the bullock 
oirtsand despatched , marked and hoopironed, to th« 
nearest railway station. A visit to a tea factory 
unmistakably proves that every process through which 
the tea passes is a cleanly one. It is not too much 
to say that after the green leaf has been once 
plucked by the coolies the tea is never allowed to 
he handled. Here is a quotation from Mr. Cave's 
book on Ceylon: ' Everything it will be observed 
is done to avoid handling the tea indeed from the 
buah to the tea table, such methods of pure clean- 
liness are observed as scarcely any other food 
manufacture cm claim, and especially do these 
methods of Ceylon tea manufactures stand in contrast 
to those of China, where the primitive operations 
employed are such that the stomach would rebel 
a:;ain3t a detailed description I am convinced that 
if the public generally did but realize this difference 
between Ceylon tea and that of some other countries 
the demand for the Cjylon article would increase 
quite bfiyond the capacity of the country to produce 
i'', " What Mr. Cave says is quite true. The most 
perfectly clean machinery and -storage of all des- 
criptions is employed, and it i« quite a pleasure and 
one not easily forgotten to see the whole process in 
operation. The Chinese on th>? other hand are very 
jealous of strangers visiting their gardens. They do 
not employ machinery but use only their hands and 
feet for the manufacture of tea. "Ah Sin" has no 
occasion to pay labour to assist him, his wife and 
olive branches being sufficient for the very small 
acreage for which he ii responsible. After his tea 
has passed through an exceedingly unpleasant pro- 
C333, which consists of rolling, breaking, and 
squeezing the leaves until the juice exudes through 
the fingers, perhaps not overclean when he com- 
mences, but perfectly so by the lime he has 
finished ; it is then fermented and we hear is put 
into a copper pan and afterwards ro s ed upon pri- 
mitive trays over a slow charcoal fire. When the 
process is in all its branches — we do not know or 
want to know — only a suggestion occurs to one that 
the earthy flavour so very apparent in China teas, 
is not alone attributable to the con t'tuents of the 
leaf. The middleman in the tea gi owing centres of 
(Ihina is a very important person, he bays the leaf 
manufactured from the peasant grower, and after 
sorting and sifting it in to lirge breaks, packs it 
into the cabalistic cases so faaailiar to everybody. 
The tea is then csirted to the great centres where 
it is bought for English or Eassian houses a d 
shipped to over-sea ports or despatched by caravan 
routes to Russia, 
In looking at the tea growing centre of Caylon 
upon the map, and considering the magnitude of the 
industry, we are surprised to see what a small area 
it occupies in relation to the rest of the island, 
which is about the size of Ireland. Ceylon from 
both in historical and agricultural point of view is 
one of the most interesting spots upon the face of the 
globe. The population is composed of Euiopeans, 
Sinhalese, Jaffna Tamils, Moors, Parsees, Portu- 
guese, Afghan and Malays with a sprinkling of 
p3ople from many other countries. The Sinhalese 
and Jaffna Tamils are the natives proper of the 
country. The latt.^r occupy the extreme north of 
the isUnd where they were driven by the victorious 
Sinhaldse after one of the many dynastic wars 
between the two races. 
The Sinhalese peasants object to work as a 
ooolie, being perfectly able to support himself and 
family upon his patch of rice and garden, to watoh 
him ploughing in with his two buffaloes, who drag a 
sharp stake through the mud of the paddy-fields ; 
forces the mind back a couple of thousand years, 
there is little doubt the passage of time has suggested 
no improvements in field culture to this veritable 
child of Nature, Lately the wealthy Sinhalese 
have taken up tea cultivation with the result that 
the labor c'ass is gradually taking to the work and 
it is calculated represents about 7% of the wage- 
earning population. The scenery of the island is 
magnificent and reminds one very much of Switzer- 
land ; there are several mountains .but not nearly of 
the same altitude ai the high ones of this comntry. 
" Pidnrutalagalla " is a little over 8,000 ft. whilst the 
celebrated " Adam's Peak " is only about 7,000 feet. 
This mountain is by 800,000,000 of people considered 
one of the most scared spots in the World, it is 
to the Buddhist what Mecca is to the Mahommedan, 
and thousands of the faithful annually visit it on 
