1847 . 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
175 
he, in market, at from $4 to $20 per acre, the meanest 
to best inclusive. The mountains, or the unimproved, 
i. e., the uncleared , fifty cents to one dollar per acre, 
and the improved from one to three dollars per acre, all 
of which is fine blue-grass land, and cannot be excelled 
for rye, oats, buckwheat, potatoes, flax, and turneps. 
Now, what more would a “ northern” man want for a 
fortune ? 
This country, among other advantages, is thought to 
be peculiarly adapted to the growth of fine wool, and 
the authority is one that no northerner can dispute, as 
he beats the whole batch of them with his sales every 
year, at Lowell, in quantity, quality, and price. I mean 
Mr. Samuel Patterson, of Washington county, Pa, He 
has visited us twice in the last twelve months, ex¬ 
amined our county in all its bearings, and pronounces 
it, in his opinion , to be the “ promised land” for grow¬ 
ers of fine wool ( sheep, and as a proof of his sincerity has 
bought land in Bedford, and is about to commence ope¬ 
rations. 
Mr. Chas. T. Botts, the editor of the “ Southern 
Planter,” in a late editorial, (and a very able one,) al¬ 
leges, as one reason why the northern farmer does not 
emigrate more to this country, the extravagance of our 
people. May-be it is so, in Mr. Botts 7 locality and the 
country adjacent, for there is the metropolis and the 
focus of the remains of Virginia aristocracy . Not so, 
with us of the mountains or upland part of the state. 
No people are plainer or disposed to be more economical. 
I will add that our late legislature waked up from a 
fifty years’ nap of stultification, and commenced doing 
something for the state, by way of beginning a generous 
internal improvement system—the resolutions of ’98, ’99 
to the contrary, notwithstanding. In a few years our 
good old mother will be “ herself again.” Nelson. 
Nelson, Va., April, 1 847. ...... 
Tea —How Dried by the Chinese. —The following 
account, by an eye witness, of the mode in which tea is 
gathered and prepared for market, by the Chinese, will 
doubtless be interesting to many of your readers. X ex¬ 
tract it from a recent familiar letter to her parents, writ¬ 
ten by Mrs. Culbertson, wife of Rev. M. S. Culbertson, 
one of the missionaries of the Presbyterian Board, station¬ 
ed at Ningpo, about twenty miles from which city the tea 
district visited, (on the 12th and 13th of May last.,) is 
situated. This account, in addition to its being more 
full and definite than any other to which I am able to 
refer, is also valuable as showing important errors in 
some of the statements heretofore published, such as, 
that tea is so powerful a narcotic that the Chinese never 
venture to use it till at least a twelvemonth after it has 
been gathered—that the newly gathered leaves are first 
subjected to the steam of boiling water—that they are 
then dried in copper vessels, &c. It is important that 
such misstatements respecting the preparation of an ar¬ 
ticle that is daily used by almost every family in our 
land, should be corrected. Yours truly, A. F. 
Salem, N. Y., Feb., 1847. 
* * * “On the side of the hill, we found women and 
children picking tea leaves from the shrub, which is as 
high as ordinary currant-bushes.' [Perhaps I am mis¬ 
taken here; Mr. C. thinks they were not over two feet 
high.] They are set a few feet from each other, and 
the leaves in form and size are very much like those of 
a wintergreen. A little farther on, we passed through 
a village of a thousand inhabitants, where we saw large 
quantities of tea drying on mats spread on the ground. 
“ But I am forgetting to tell you what I presume 
will be more interesting to you than anything else I can 
write about—the process of curing the tea. It is very 
simple, and the idea which some of you “ outside bar¬ 
barians ’’ entertain, that tea is dried on copper is entire¬ 
ly incorrect. It is mostly picked from the bushes by 
women and children, into baskets, one person being able 
to pick about thirty “ eattis” (or forty pounds) in a day. 
It is then spread on mats, and dried an hour or more in 
the sun, previously however, having some of the juice 
squeezed out, and the leaves somewhat curled, by rub¬ 
bing them with the hand over a rough kind of matting, 
which lets the juice run off. After drying in the sun. it 
is ready to be “ fired,” which is an operation we watch¬ 
ed some time, with much interest. A dozen or more 
pounds are put into a kind of kettle, resembling a potash 
kettle, except that it is low on the front side, and runs 
up some two feet behind. A man stands in front, and 
keeps the tea constantly stirring while being heated, 
which he accomplishes by thrusting his arms as high as 
his elbow's under the hot tea, and giving it a toss up¬ 
wards against the back of the kettle. This operation is 
kept up two or three hours, by two men, who constant¬ 
ly relieve each other. When this process is finished, it 
is ready for market, but tea that is intended for export¬ 
ation is again fired slightly by the tea merchants be¬ 
fore being shipped. We drank some that w r as growing 
on the bushes the day before, and might have obtained 
some that had been gathered and cured that day. This 
tea is of a fine quality, and is known as the “ Tau-bah- 
san tea, from the name of the mountain on which it 
grows. Some of the finest of it is prepared for the Em¬ 
peror. It is the green tea of which I have been writing. 
The black , it may be, is subjected to a process in some 
respects different.” . 
Use of Lime as a Manure in New Jersey.— 
About from 1825 to ’3$, the farmers of this region 
began to learn that lime would change the soil of our 
naturally sterile hills, to the strongest kind of corn and 
wheat land; and indeed no one but an eye witness could 
believe the change that it has already wrought. Be¬ 
fore we were aware of its power, some applied too 
much, and injured the land for two or three years; but 
by' deep plowing and bringing up and mixing the clay 
w T ith the soil, and growing clover, to equalize the pro¬ 
portion of vegetable matter with the lime, &c., a pow¬ 
erful wheat soil was formed. Those who say that eve 
ry soil has lime enough naturally, should visit Morris. 
There they may see fields of thirty to fifty acres; on 
which nothing grows but what we call “ poverty grass,” 
and sassafras bushes, and in the one adjoining, as noble 
crops of corn, wheat, or oats, as any reasonable man 
would wish to see. And this too, is so certainly attribu¬ 
table to the lime, that all now use it, even the old 
Germans, whose prejudices have deprived them of its 
beneficial effects 20 years or more. 
Any quantity of lime can be obtained at the kilns, for 
six to eight cents a bushel, every bushel of which, when 
slaked, will average double the quantity. I find by 
careful experiment, that the best manner of applying it, 
and in which it has the most immediate effect, is to 
place it in heaps of from 100 to 200 bushels, as may be 
most convenient, and leave it to pulverize by the action 
of the air and rain for two or three months. By this 
time it will become a carbonate, and is fit to apply to 
any crop, at the rate of 30 to 50 bushels per acre, or 
rather, double that quantity, it being slaked. Of course 
the quality of the soil must regulate the quantity; a 
good soil bearing a larger quantity than a poor one. 
I have seen lime in the above condition, put upon corn 
hills before the corn was up, (a quart to the hill.) and 
strange as it may seem to those unacquainted with 
lime, except in its caustic state, with marked good ’ef¬ 
fect, while the gaping crowd predicted ruin to the crop, 
not knowing the difference between it and fresh lime. 
I have tried it fresh from the kiln, (a light dressing of 
•30 bushels to the acre,) harrowing it in, and this trifle, 
on account of its caustic property, caused a difference 
for the worse that could be seen a mile—other corn, 
unlimed, standing side by side. But its good effect 
never fails when applied in the former state. 
