Tea, its history and mystery

by Joseph M. Walsh

Tea is more or less cultivated for local consumption in all the provinces of China, except the extreme northern. But to what exact degree of latitude it is difficult to be precise, as we are without definite information from those regions, and the vast empire of China not being sufficiently explored by botanists to warrant the assertion that the plant is not to be found in other parts of the country, at least in a wild state. So far, however, it has not been discovered there, except in a state of cultivation, or as having evidently escaped from cultivation on roadsides or other out-of-the-way places.

We know that it is cultivated in Tonquin and Yunnan, but only to a limited extent, the product of these provinces being also of a very inferior quality. It is grown in Cochin-China and the mountain ranges of Ava, but only for local consumption, and that, while it is indigenous to the mountains, separating China from Burmah, it is not cultivated there for either export or profit, and although claimed by some authorities to be grown all over the Chinese empire, its cultivation for commercial purposes is confined to the region lying between the 24th and 35th degrees of north latitude, the climate between these parallels varying to a considerable extent, being much warmer in the southern than in the northern provinces. The districts in which it is chiefly cultivated, however, and from which it is principally exported, are embraced in the southwestern provinces of Che-kiang, Fo-kien, Kiang-see, Kiang-nan, Gan-hwuy Kwang-tung, some little being also produced for export in the western province of Sze-chuan.

It is cultivated for commercial purposes all over the Japanese islands, from Kiusiu, in the south, to Niphon, in the extreme north, but the zone found most favorable to its most profitable production in these islands is that lying between the 30th and 35th degrees, more especially in the coast provinces of the interior sea. It is also grown to some extent in Corea, from which country—although claimed by some to be the original country of tea—none is ever exported.

In the year 1826 some tea seeds were sent from Japan to Java and planted as an experiment in the residency of Buitenzorg, where they were found to succeed so well that tea-culture was immediately commenced on an extensive scale in the adjoining residencies of Cheribon, Preanger and Krawang, the number of tea trees in the former district amounting to over 50,000 in 1833. The several other districts of the island to which it had been extended, now containing upwards of 20,000,000 trees from which over 20,000,000 pounds of prepared tea are annually delivered to commerce, tea-culture forming one of the chief industries of the island at the present day.

A species of the tea plant has been found growing in a truly wild state in the mountain ranges of Hindostan, particularly on those bordering on the Chinese province of Yunnan, from which fact it is claimed by some writers as probable that these mountains are the original home of tea. Recent explorations also show that the tea plant is to be found growing wild in the forests of Assam, Sylhet and the Himalaya hills, as well as over the great range of mountains extending thence through China to the Yang-tse river. At an early period the British East India Company, as the principal trade intermediary between China and Europe, became deeply interested in the question of tea cultivation in their eastern possessions, but without much success until in 1840, when the Assam Tea Company was formed, from which year the successful cultivation of tea in India has been carried on, the tea districts of that country including at the present time, in the order of their priority, Assam, Dehradun, Kumaon, Darjeeling, Cachar, Kangra, Hazarila, Chittagong, Burmah, Neilgherry and Travancore.

Various efforts were made to introduce tea-culture into Ceylon, under both Dutch and British rule, no permanent success being attained until about 1876, when the disastrous effects of the coffee-leaf disease induced the planters to give more serious attention to tea. Since that period tea cultivation has developed there with marvelous rapidity, having every prospect at the present time of taking first rank among Ceylon productions.

Dr. Abel highly recommends the Cape of Good Hope as furnishing a fitting soil and climate for the beneficial production of tea, stating that “there is nothing improbable in a plant that is so widely diffused from north to south being grown there.” Tea of average quality being now shipped from Natal to the London market.

Besides Java, India and Ceylon, where tea culture has been introduced and profitably demonstrated, numerous attempts have and are being made to colonize the plant in other countries than these of the East, but beyond the countries above enumerated, the industry has so far never taken root, for while the cultivated varieties of the tea-plant are comparatively hardy, possessing an adaptability to climate excelled alone among plants only by that of wheat, the limits of actual tea cultivation extend from the 39th degree of north latitude in Japan, through the tropics to Java, Ceylon, India and China, and while it will live in the open air in many of the countries into which it has been introduced and withstand some amount of frost when it receives sufficient summer heat to harden its root, but comparatively few of those regions are suited for practical tea-growing.

As far back as 1872, some tea plants were sent from China to the Kew gardens in England, for the purpose of testing the possibility of its growth in that country. The attempt, however, ended in failure, the seeds never germinating, later efforts under more careful training meeting with the same fate. Considerable success attended its introduction into the islands of Bourbon and Mauritius, in 1844, the tea produced being pronounced as “excellent in flavor, but lacking in that strength and aroma so characteristic of the Chinese variety.”

Its cultivation has been recently attempted in the Philippines by the Spanish, in Sumatra and Borneo by the Dutch, and by the French in Cochin-China, nearly all of which experiments so far proving failures, the only success reported being from the latter country, where the soil is good and moisture equable. Tea plantations have also been lately opened up in Malay, Singapore, and other of the Straits settlements by the English; some teas of fair quality, but insufficient quantity, having already produced in many of them. Its cultivation forms one of the industries of the Fiji islands at the present time; the soil and climate of the latter being found eminently adapted to its successful propagation, land and labor, the chief difficulties in other countries, being particularly available there. Extraordinary efforts are now also being made to introduce the plant into the warmer parts of Australia.