In the interim, the month of December proving excessively hot and rainy, so as to forbid any distant excursions, I turned my attention to the important object of procuring tea plants in number and state fit for exportation; and, observing that almost all the shrubs I saw were too large for this purpose, I applied to M. de Brandao for his help and advice. This gentleman, in the most courteous manner, offered me either seeds or slips from his own tea shrubs. The striking of the latter was, he owned, a hazardous and uncertain affair, though it had the probable advantage of securing a finer kind of plant than could with certainty be raised from seed. I, however, began by asking him for newly gathered seeds, in order to set them in my little nursery garden at Santa Theresa, and he obligingly gave me a thousand of the seeds, perfectly ripe and sound, which is easily known by the purplish-brown color of their integument. M. Houlet immediately set about preparing the soil in which to plant these seeds, and the earth being excessively argillaceous and hard, much digging, manuring, and dressing were needful; in a word, we neglected no precautions which could contribute to the growth of our seeds. In the interim I allowed not a single dry day to elapse without visiting the country house near Rio, in all of which I saw something more or less interesting, either in the culture of tea, or other vegetable productions of commercial value.
I detected, growing not unfrequently in the environs of Rio, the Ilex Paraguayensis of M. Auguste de St. Hilaire, perfectly identical with the tree which the Jesuits planted in the missions of Paraguay, and whose foliage is an article of great importance throughout Spanish America, and vended under the name of Paraguay Tea. A living plant of this shrub was brought home by me, and placed in the Royal Garden at Paris, as well as a species of Vanilla, and many other rare and interesting plants. I also made a valuable collection of woods employed for dyeing, building, and cabinet work, with samples of their flowers, fruits, and leaves, to facilitate botanical determination.
Early in January, 1839, M. Houlet began anew sowing tea, not only in the open ground in our little garden, but also in pans, in order to facilitate the lifting of the young plants, and putting them into the cases that I had brought for the purpose. The heat being excessive, we purchased mats, that we might shelter them from the sun, and we gave them water far more frequently. Many of the seeds that we had sown a month previously, were already appearing above the ground, but the soil being of too compact a nature, some did not come up, which warned us to make choice in future of a lighter kind of soil.
The period now arrived when I was to visit the tea plantations in the province of St. Paul; and hoping that the cultivators would give me some of the young shrubs, I took M. Houlet with me, leaving the charge of our collections and seedlings to M. Pissis, a French geologist and engineer, with whom I had formed an intimate acquaintance, and who most obligingly offered to attend to them during my absence. Many were the influential persons at Rio Janeiro, who gave me introductory letters to the proprietors and tea growers of St. Paul.
We started on the 15th January, by steam-boat, and in two days reached Santos, the principal port in the province of St. Paul; thence crossing the great chain of mountains, named the Serra do Mar, in caravans drawn by mules, we reached the city of St. Paul on the 20th January, where I experienced the warmest reception from the governor, two ex-governors, and some other gentlemen.
Accompanied by M.J. Gomez and a M. Barandier, an historical painter, whom the desire to visit a new country, and to see its inhabitants, had induced to become my compagnon de voyage, we visited almost immediately a M. Feigo, ex-Regent of the Empire, and now President of the Provincial Senate. We found this venerable ecclesiastic at his country-house, two leagues distant from the city, and here we saw all the process pursued on the tea leaf, commencing by the bruising, drying, and scorching of a large quantity of foliage picked the preceding evening. The chief difference that struck me in the mode here adopted, was, that the tender, flexible, and not brittle leaves, were gathered with the petiole and tip extremity of every bud, and that some water was put with them into the iron pan, in which the negresses twisted, squeezed, broke and shook the masses of foliage. The operation was, on the whole, more neatly performed than at Rio. When the tea was perfectly dry and removed from the pan, it was placed aside in a box, shaded from the air and light, and was considered ready for present use, on the spot; but M. Feigo informed me, that when sent to a distance, the cases were hermetically closed, and the tea underwent an extra dessication over the fire.
The plantations belonging to M. Feigo, and surrounding his chagara, are extensive, containing about 20,000 tea shrubs, of fine growth and high vigor, most of them six or eight years old, set in regular lines, a metre asunder from each other, and the lines with a metre and a half between them. The soil is excellent, argillaceo-ferruginous, as is generally the case near St. Paul.
In the Botanic Garden at St. Paul, some squares are devoted to the growth of tea; but I am not aware that the leaves are ever subject to preparation.