14r8 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[April, 
[COPTEIGHT SECURED.] 
DRYING AND PACKING TEA BT THE CHINES E.— Drawn and Engraved for the American Agriculturist. 
Is that your exclamation? Of course he washed them, 
"but even if he did n't, I dare say the tea is as clean as the 
champaign that men smack their lips over and pronounce 
superb ; for, if you were to visit France during the vin- 
tage season, you would see hare legged men jumping up 
and down in a tub filled with grapes, crushing the de- 
licious fruit with their feet. Or, if you knew all about 
the making of molasses and sugar, candy would not be 
quite so nice as it now is. When the tea chest is full, 
the lead lining is soldered, the cover nailed down, and 
the paper with the queer Chinese characters is pasted 
on, and the " chop " is ready for market. The chests are 
lined with lead to preserve the tea from gathering 
moisture while in the stores, or while being exported to 
foreign countries. The leaves take in moisture easily, 
and they would soon become as musty as damaged 
meadow hay, if this precaution were not taken. The at- 
mosphere in China during the summer months is full of 
moisture,— so fall that the people who live in Shanghae 
have to kindle fires in July and August to dry up the 
dampness. Clothes mould in the closets. Put your boots 
aside for twenty-four hours and they will be covered with 
green fungus, just such as yon see in a mouldy cheese. 
If there are two or three cloudy days in succession, 
every thing becomes mouldy, musty, and rusty. The 
books on your parlor table are covered with mould, un- 
less wiped carefully every day. * 
Because China has such a damp climate the tea plant 
thrives. The dampness makes the leaves tender. The 
plant cannot be profitably cultivated in a dry climate. 
It would undoubtedly grow well in Georgia, Alabama, 
Mississippi, and perhaps in Oregon, bat so long as there 
are four hundred million of people in China— most of 
whom work for a living, and work for very little pay, we 
ehal) not be able to make much headway cultivating tea 
in this country where labor is so dear. 
The Chinese are extravagantly fond of tea, and they 
driuk it at all hours of the day and night. The tea 
saloons are always open. You sit down to a small table 
in a large hall where there are several hundred pig-tailed 
men laughing, talking, and drinking their favorite hev- 
erage. It is not green tea, hut black. They do not often 
touch the green varieties. Yon call for a cup of tea, and 
a little boy, with a little cue, like a pig-tail, sprouting from 
the crown of his head, hrings you two cups and a saucer. 
You wonder what the second cup with a cover is for. 
But see ! He puts a small quantity of tea, just a pinch, 
into one cup, pours the boiling water upon it and puts on 
the cover to keep in all the steam and aroma, lets it stand 
a minute or two, then drains it into the other cup. It 
looks very weak and hasn't hardly any color. You fear 
it is as "weak as dish-water. 1 ' Bat just taste it. Isn't 
it delicious? You sip it— a little at a time, and smack 
your lips every time you swallow. Yon think of the Indian 
who wished his neck was half a mile long so that he 
could taste the whiskey all the way down ! You can 
drink it all day and not get drunk, and as soon as your 
cup is empty you call for more. You drink it without 
milk or sugar, for that would spoil it. You notice a 
large jar beneath the table, and that the boy turns the 
grounds from your cup into it. When it is full it is taken 
out-doors and the contents dried in the sun. Then they 
are taken into the preparing room where they are colored 
with Prussian blue, Turmeric, Gypsum, and other things, 
dried in the pans, trampled a second time beneath the 
heels of a cooly, and sent over forns to drink ! Even then 
it is better for ns than whiskey, and no dirtier than many 
other things that we put into onr mouths. Host of the teas 
sent to this country are of low cost, and of a poor quality. 
The Chinese drink the hest! They do not make it so 
strong as we do, and experience no had effects from its nse. 
All teas are purchased by sample, and the English and 
American merchants in China have tasters — yonng men 
whose sole business is to judge of the qualities of tea. 
You enter a tasting room and at the first glance think it 
a pantry, a china closet, and a grocery store, all in one ; 
there are so many cups, covers, and packages of tea on 
the shelves. The young man has forty or fifty cups be- 
fore him, and as many samples of tea. He weighs out a 
small quantity for each cup, and steeps each parcel so 
many seconds by the watch, and then tastes of each cup, 
and so judges of its strength and quality. These tasters 
get great pay— some of them five and even ten thousand 
dollars a year in gold. But they mortgage their health 
and lives. This constant tasting, after awhile, tells upon 
their nervous system, aud the chances are that they will 
shorten their days. If any young man reading this has a 
desire to drop every thing and rush off to China to be a 
tea taster, he had hetter think twice, for very few tasters 
are wanted, and the large salary is dearly earned if loss 
of health and a shortening of life are the accompani- 
ments, for among the best blessings bequeathed by our 
Heavenly Father is that of good health. 
Answers to ]Pi-©t>lems and 5*nzzlcs. 
No. 371. A man intent on being ov.er ruled in all his 
deeds, hy principle alone, is placed beyond the reach of 
fortune. A man in tent on B in G over rule-D in awl- 
niS deeds BY prince eye PLE ale-on-E is placed beyond 
the reach of fortune. 
No. 372. Fill the 3 gallon vessel and pour it into the 
5 gallon vessel, refill^the 3 gallon vessel and fill up the 
5 gallons. Empty the 5 gallon vessel into the keg : pour 
the gallon which remains in the 3 gallon vessel into the 
now empty 5 gallon one, draw the 3 gallon one full again 
and add it to the gallon already in the 5 gallon vessel, 
and there will he 4 gallons left in the keg and 4 in the 
5 gallon vessel. 
No. 373. Many grow insane, overcome, and given over 
to despair on heholding the failure of long cherished 
undertakings, hut a good man cannot be thus over- 
whelmed. Men, negro-in-seine-over-comc, and given- 
ovcr-two D's, pear-on-B-holcling thief, ale ewer of, long- 
cherishcd-nnder-Ta, Kings, but a good man can knot bee 
thus- over- whelmed. 
No. 374, One woman had 5 eggs and the orher had 7. 
