“TCHA"-TAY-TEA.

Northland Age, Volume 3, Issue 21, 2 January 1907, Page 2

“TCHA"-TAY-TEA.

How many of us can assert off* hand, when and where tea first appeared in dietetic history ? It seems that tea did not originate in China, though the Chinese have the credit of discovering and putting it into regular cultivation. A Chinese legend relates that it was brought to China about 500 A.D. by one Djarma, a native of India. De Candolle, the famous Swiss botanist, said he had certainly traced its use in Qhina before the year 519 A.D. Yet cultivation of tea itself did not begin, says Sir William Hunter, till almost within the memory of living man, it being first grown in 1780 at Sibpur, near Calcutta, as a mere garden curiosity, By one Colonel Kyd, who had got some seed from Canton.

No European commerce with China was possible till after 1497, when the explorations of the great Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama opened up the seaway between Europe and the Orient. The Portuguese began to trade'with China about 1516, and were followed by tho Spanish and the Dutch, the British putting in no appearance tilll more than a century afterwards.

It was the Dutch who, in 1610, first brought tea to’ Europe, and during tho following four or five decades it was seen in England on raro occasions, but scarcely as a trade commodity, for when sold it realised £6 and even £lO per lb., money,, too, being “dearer" in those days than now. It is strange to realise that Chaucer and Shakespeare and Bacon knew nothing of tea, but, like Queen Elizabeth’s maids of honour, breakfasted and otherwise refreshed themselves with small beer, ale, mead, and all the other beverages which the good housewives of that period generally irewed at home ! T<lfrj\pncF tasted, made rapid conquest, By 1669 the East India Company had opened a regular trade in China tea.

In 1728 the cheapest black tea was sold at 13s. per pound, and the cheapest “green” at 12s. The ‘best* prices, however, still ruled from £1 to £1 10s. These must have been about the prices prevailing when Cellley Cibber, the dramatist, thus apostrophized it in one of his plays :

“Tea ! thou soft, thou sober, sage, and venerable liquid ; thou female-tongue-running, smile-smoothing, heart-opening, wink-tipping cordial!” The theologian poet, I)r. Young, at the same period describing the “airs and graces" brought in by the new fashion :

How two red lips affected zephyrs blow, To cool the bohea and inflame the beau, While one white finger and a thumb conspire To lift the cup and make the world admire !

Tea was not seriously cultivated in India till the middle of last century Hundreds of thousands of acres there are now devoted to its cultivation. Ceylon did not really enter into competition till about 3 880, when the timely introduction of tea practically saved the island from financial ruin, due to the “loaf disease fungus,” which destroyed all hopes of the coffee crops on which it had hitherto prospered.