Tea′pot.
A vessel in which tea is infused.
The first notice of tea among the “Western barbarians” is perhaps the account given by
Herodotus, Book IV. XXI., XXIII.:—
“Beyond the Tanais the region of Scythia terminates, and the first of the nations we meet with are the Sauromatae, who inhabit a space of fifteen days journey. . . Beyond these are the Budini, and beyond them a desert of eight days journey.
[Then follows an orderly account of several countries occupied by other nations, then a stony tract, and eventually a people] living at the foot of some lofty mountains [Himalaya]. They live chiefly on the
produce of a tree which is called the
ponticus; it is as large as a fig-tree, and has a kernel not unlike a bean.
When it is ripe they press it through a cloth; it produces a
thick black liquor which they call
aschy; this they
drink, mixing it with milk; the grosser parts, which remain, they form into balls [brick-tea] and eat.”
The worthy chronicler was mistaken as to one point: it was a leaf and not a fruit.
Even then he was much nearer to the mark than one of the large whiskey-distillers of
Cincinnati, who observed to a lady in the hearing of the author, “Sponges, madam; I believe they grow on trees.”
The annals of China place the use of the leaf at a very remote date.
It was introduced into
Japan in the ninth century A. D., but was not brought to
Europe till some seven centuries later.
It was about the middle of the seventeenth century (1664) that the East India Company presented to the queen of
England a package of two pounds of tea, then valued at forty shillings a pound.
About the same time some
Russian ambassadors returned to
Moscow, bringing some carefully packed
green tea, which was esteemed a great delicacy.
The overland tea is still the best.
An advertisement in the “Mercurius Politicus,” September 30, 1658, is as follows:—
That excellent and by all physitians approved China drink, called by Chineans Tcha, by other nations tay, alias tee, is sold at the ‘Sultana Head’ Coffee-house, London.
I did send for a cup of tee, a China drink, of which I had never drunk before. — Pepys, 1660.
In 1667 the
British East India Company gave their agents an order for “teas of the best kind to the amount of 100 dollars.”
In 1678 they imported 4,713 pounds, a quantity which appears to have glutted the market for several years.
In 1721 the annual import had reached 1,000,000 pounds.
Tea was used in
China long before it was cultivated, several varieties of the bush growing wild.
Among the first notices by foreigners of its use — excepting the remarkable one by
Herodotus, the father of history, as he has been termed, and his character for truth and veracity becomes more and more established — is the account given by two Mohammedan travelers of the ninth century, translated from the Arabic by Renaudot, “Ancient accounts” :—
“
The emperor also reserves to himself the revenues which arise from the salt-mines, and from a certain herb which they drink with hot-water, and of which great quantities are sold in all the cities, to amount to great sums.
They call it
sah (or
tcha), and it is a shrub more bushy than the pomegranate tree, and of a more taking smell, but it has a kind of bitterness with it. Their way is to boil water, which they pour over the leaf, and this drink cures all kinds of diseases.”
El Wahab elsewhere describes the infusion as “drunk out of beautiful cups molded of a rare earth, and made almost as transparent as glass.”
“These Mohammedan travelers found a country in which letters were cultivated by high and low. There were schools in every town for teaching the poor to write and read, and the masters were paid at the public charge.
There was a large literature of printed books.
The governmental officers were selected from the literary graduates, and had been for three centuries” (sixth century A. D.) —
Prof. Sewall.
They had also dials, and clocks, moved by weights.
This was the era of Alfred the
Great, the most versatile monarch and greatest man of history.
It was also the brilliant epoch of the
Moorish occupation of
Spain, then the gem of
Europe.
About this time took place the separation of the Greek and Roman churches, and the temporal sovereignty of the latter was assuming its great proportions.
The
brick-tea or
tile-tea of
China is used universally over
Northern Asia and Chinese Tartary.
Tea is used as a beverage and also as an ingredient in stews and soups.
“Brick-tea boiled with salt.”
“We seated ourselves on a red carpet, and there was soon brought from a neighboring tent, which served as a kitchen, tea with milk, rolls fried in butter [doughnuts], cheese, dried grapes, and sweetmeats.”
“Payments in Tartary are made in brick-tea, whether the
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article be a horse, a house, or any other commodity.
Five bricks of tea represent an ounce of silver.” — Abbe Huc, Journey in Tartary, 1844-1846.
Another traveler writes: “On the Thibet side of the
Himalaya mountains a tribe of wandering traders, called the Hunnias, travel over great distances, living upon brick-tea, which is brought from
China, and consists of the coarsest leaves, twigs, and seeds of the tea, pressed by weights into lumps, and rendered more adhesive by a slight admixture of the serum of sheep's blood.
Upon this they perform long journeys.”
At Kiachta, in 1862, the imports of tea from
China amounted in value to 7,748,816 silver roubles, equal in value to $5,812,000, as follows:—
| Tea | 6,851,445 roubles. |
| Brick-tea | 897,371 roubles. |
 |
|
Teapots and brick-tea (Thibetan Himalaya). |
Fig. 6232, from
Hooker's “Himalayan journal,” illustrates a brick of tea, two forms of teapot, and a teacup, used by the Thibetans.
A tobacco-pipe, two pouches, flint and steel (which might readily be mistaken for a knife), and those
Oriental substitutes for the knife and fork, the chopsticks, are also shown.
A nourishing mess is prepared from this brick-tea, which is extensively used throughout the colder regions of
Asia, by churning up a handful of the leaves with salt, butter, and soda, and boiling the compound, which is served up scalding hot.
Tea is produced in greater or less quantity and perfection in that part of
Asia extending from westward of Nepaul to and including the
Japanese islands on the east, and embracing in its greatest width more than 20° of latitude, say from 18° to 38° on the continent, and extending to beyond the 40th parallel in
Japan.
The great center of production, however, is an oval area in the
East, lying on each side of the parallel of 30°, extending back some five hundred miles from the coast, its greatest width being somewhat less.
Shanghae is on the extreme northeast boundary of this district, where it is terminated by the coast.
Attempts have been made, it is said, recently, with considerable success, to introduce the culture of the plant into Ceylon.
It has also been cultivated with some success in
Northern India.
About 1844,
Dr. Junius Smith, of
South Carolina, attempted the culture of tea in that State.
The plants throve, but the product could not compete in price with that grown by cheap labor in
China.
In
Brazil, the shrub is found to thrive even more luxuriantly than in
China, attaining the proportions of a small tree, but the leaf lacks the delicate aroma which distinguishes it on its native soil, becoming harsh and coarse-flavored.
Within a few years past it has been naturalized in
California, where the climate and soil appear propitious.
Though indigenous in
China, the native growth there is not much depended on for a supply.
On the contrary, the plant is most carefully cultivated, and affords one chief employment to the people of that vast empire.
The plant is grown in almost every variety of soil, but that best adapted to it is a light loam, more or less stony, abounding in vegetable mold, and moist but not wet. The seeds are gathered in October, and kept in sand till the following spring, when they are sown, either in rows in the field where they are to grow, or else in beds, from which they are transplanted; if the latter, they are put out the second year in rows three or four feet apart.
In growing, they look not unlike a field of currant-bushes with us. They are hardy, yet if the weather is very cold they need protection; if dry, the cultivators resort to irrigation.
The gathering of the leaves sometimes commences the third year, though often not till the fourth.
There are three or four harvests, — the first, of leaf buds, early in April, though many prefer to forego this, and allow the leaves to grow.
If gathered, these buds make the choicest variety of
black tea, known as Pekoe.
But new leaves soon appear, and a second gathering occurs the last of April, or early in May, which is the principal harvest, and affords a fine tea as the product.
A third gathering occurs early in July, which furnishes leaves of an inferior quality; and sometimes there is a fourth gathering in August or September, which furnishes leaves still coarser and poorer.
The plants rarely last more than eight or ten years, when they are dug up and replaced with a new stock.
In gathering, the leaves are stripped off with much care, and carried to a building where they are assorted and dried.
The drying process varies as to the kind of tea to be produced, for our varieties of green and
black tea are not so much the product of different species or regions as results from different ways of curing the same leaf.
The green teas are cured almost as soon as the leaves are brought from the field, being allowed to remain not more than an hour or two thinly spread upon trays, to dry off any superfluous moisture, before they are put into the roasting-pans.
These latter have been in the mean time heated by a brisk fire, and into them are thrown a few of the leaves, which are allowed to remain four or five minutes, rapidly shaken and stirred, when they are thrown out upon a table and rolled with the hands.
Afterward they are again thrown into a pan, heated by a slow, steady fire, and allowed to remain an hour or an hour and a half, being kept all the time in motion by the hands of the workmen.
Sometimes they are thrown upon a table to be rolled a second time.
This completes the chief part of the operation, though afterward, when a considerable quantity has thus been finished, it goes through a farther process of winnowing and sifting to separate impurities, and assorting into different varieties, and reheating also, to be sure that the drying is complete.
Teas for home consumption are never colored.
Those for export to
Europe and
America are made more pleasing to the eye, if not to the palate, by the addition of Prussian blue,
China clay, turmeric, and a white powder usually composed of kaolin, soapstone, or sulphate of lime.
Black-lead and indigo are also employed for coloring and glazing.
Rice or paddy husks mixed with fragments of the tea-leaf, and tea-dust mixed with sand and rice-water, known as “Lie tea,” are other factitious products designed to “cheer but not inebriate” the outside barbarian.
The
mate, or Paraguayan tea, is a holly (
Ilex paraguaiensis), and is gathered in the woods during the whole year.
It is kilndried, and then powdered in mortars.
In use, a quantity of the leaf is placed in a bowl, steeped awhile in cold water, and then boiling water poured upon it. It is imbibed through a tube to avoid drinking the particles of leaf and stem.
The
yaupon of the Carolinas, called by the
South Carolina Indians the
cassina, is also an
Ilex (
I. cassine or
vomitoria), and has been used from time immemorial by the
Southern Indians, the leaf being a valued article of exchange between the Indians of the coast — where it grows — and the tribes of the interior.
It is a stimulant, and acts, according to quantity and the condition of the person, as a diuretic or emetic.
It formed the “black drink” of the
Indian ceremonials.
See
Lawton's “Travels in
Carolina,”
London, 1709, pages 90, 91.
Also
Porcher's “Resources of the
Southern fields and forests,”
Charleston, 1869, pages 431-433.
It is also used as a substitute for imported tea by the poorer inhabitants of
North Carolina in the vicinity of the sounds, and to a small extent forms an article of domestic export.
A list of vegetable substances prepared by infusion for medicinal or stimulating purposes might be extended to an indefinite length.
A few of these, in which the mouth acts the part of a teapot, the saliva serving to extract the stimulating principle, form the ordinary solace of no inconsiderable portion of the human race.
To say nothing of tobacco, the chewing of which is pretty much confined to the natives of this country, though approaching cosmopolitan universality perhaps among sailors, we have the
betel of the
East Indies, the use of which is very general over a considerable part of the world's surface, and particularly among the Malayan races.
This is prepared from the leaves of several species of pepper, as
Chavica betle, Chavica siraboa, plucked green and spread over with quick-lime (
chunam), generally prepared from oystershells, and wrapped around scrapings of the areca nut (
Areca catechu). Though too pungent for a European taste, and, it is said, frequently rendering its users toothless by the age of twenty-five, the Malays of all ages generally keep their betelboxes in requisition from morning till night.
It imparts a red color to the saliva and blackens the lips and teeth.
Those species of plants of the genus
Chavica, a division of the pepper family, which yield it, are extensively cultivated.
They are climbers, and are trained on poles, trellises, or the stems of palms.
The coca, in general use among the Indians who inhabit the elevated plains among the Andes, is a stimulating narcotic, consisting of the dried leaves of
Erythrosylon coca, in combination with a peculiar alkaline substance called
clipta. Provided with a sufficient supply of this drug, an Indian will make an arduous journey of several days' duration without food.
Its habitual use is said to be attended with effects analogous to those of opium.
The plant is largely grown in the province of
La Paz, in Bolivia, forming an important source of wealth to the inhabitants.
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A German authority,
Von Bibra, in his Preface to “Die narkotischen Genuss-Mittel und der Mensch” (Man and the Use of Narcotics), assumes the following: “Coffee leaves, in the form of infusions, are used by 2,000,000 of human beings;
Paraguay tea is consumed by 10,000,000; coca by as many; betel is chewed by 100,000,000; chicory, either pure or mixed with coffee, by 40,000,000; cacao, either as chocolate or in some other form, by 50,000,000; 300,000,000 eat or smoke hashish; 400,000,000 use opium;
Chinese tea is drunk by 500,000,000; coffee by 100,000,000.
All known peoples of the earth are addicted to the use of tobacco, chiefly in the form of smoking; otherwise as snuffing or chewing.”
Alcoholic stimulants are not included in his estimate.
