and a meal on it, including sugar and butter, is so expensive, they must 
forego what is more necessary for their support, in order to enjoy it. 
When the Chinese first began to make use of tea as a beverage, we are 
not able to say, but it is probable that the ill taste of the water in many 
parts of the empire would induce them to look out for some vegetable to cor¬ 
rect it, soon after they arrived at a state of civilization. The earliest account 
that we have of it is from two Arabian travellers , who visited China about 
the year 850, and relate that the inhabitants of that empne had a medicinal 
beverage, named chah or sah, which was prepared by pouring boiling water 
on the dried leaves of a certain herb, which infusion was reckoned an effica¬ 
cious remedy in various diseases.* From the great revenue which these tra¬ 
vellers inform us was levied from the consumption of tea , it seems then to 
have been as universally the favourite beverage of the Chinese in the ninth 
century, as it is at present.f 
Giovanni Botaro, an eminent Italian author, observes, that the Chinese 
have an herb, out of which they press a delicate juice, which serves them 
for a drink instead of wine: it also preserves their health, and frees them 
from all those evils that the immoderate use of wine doth breed in us.J 
About the year l 600 , Texeia , a Spaniard, saw the dried leaves in Ma¬ 
lacca , where he was informed that the Chinese prepared a drink from this 
vegetable: and in 1633, Olearius found this practice prevalent among the 
Persians , who procured the plant under the name of cha orchia , from China , 
by means of the Usbeck Tartars. In 1630, Stirkaw , the Russian ambassa¬ 
dor at the court of the Mogul Chau Altyn, partook of the infusion of tea ; 
and at his departure was offered a quantity of it, as a present for the Czar 
Michael Romanoff, which the ambassador refused, as being an article for 
which they had no use in Russia.§ 
Tea was not known in Europe as a beverage, before the commencement 
of the seventeenth century. Some Dutch adventurers seeking, about that 
time, for such objects as might fetch a price in China, and hearing of the 
general usage there of a beverage from a plant of the country, bethought 
themsewes of tiying how far an European plant, of supposed great virtues. 
* Renaudot Anciennes Relations, Par. 1/18, p. 31. Haller, Bibl. bot. I. 176 . 
^ Robei tson s India, p. q6, J Engl. Tlrans. 1530. Anderson's Commerce. 
Letts, p. 21. 
§ Letts, p. 20 . 
