Probably That Called Tien-Sing In Modern Maps, On The River Pay, Between Pekin And The Sea.

- E.]

Sec.3. Of the Manner of cultivating Tea in Chusan.

The three sorts of tea usually carried to England are all from the same plant, their difference being occasioned by the soils in which they grow, and the season of the year at which they are gathered. The bohea, or vo-u-i, so called from certain mountains in the province of Token,[331] where it is chiefly made, is the very bud, gathered in the beginning of March, and dried in the shade. The tea named bing is the second growth, gathered in April, and siriglo is the last growth, gathered in May and June; both of these being gently dried over the fire in taches or pans. The tea shrub is an evergreen, being in flower from October to January, and the seed ripens in the September or October following, so that both flower and seed may be gathered at the same time; but for one fully ripened seed, an hundred are abortive. There are the two sorts of seeds mentioned by Father Le Compte, in his description of tea; and what be describes as a third sort, under the name of slymie pease, consists merely of the young flower-buds, not yet open. The seed vessels of the tea tree are three-capsular, each capsule containing one nut or seed; and though often two or one of these only come to perfection, yet the vestiges of the rest may easily be discerned. It grows naturally in a dry gravelly soil on the sides of hills, without any cultivation, in several places of this island.

[Footnote 331: Fo-kien is almost certainly here meant - E.]

Le Compte is mistaken in saying that the Chinese are ignorant of the art of grafting; for I nave seen many of his paradoxical tallow-trees ingrafted here, besides trees of other sorts. When they ingraft, they do not slit the stock as we do, but slice off the outside of the stock, to which they apply the graft, which is cut sloping on one side, to correspond with the slice on the stock, bringing the bark of the slice up on the outside of the graft, after which the whole is covered up with mud and straw, exactly as we do. The commentator on Magalhen seems doubtful as to the length of the Chinese che or cubit. At this island they have two sorts, one measuring thirteen inches and seven-tenths English, which, is commonly used by merchants; the other is only eleven inches, being used by carpenters, and also in geographical measures. Though Father Martini is censured by Magalhen for spelling a great many Chinese words with ng, which the Portuguese and others express with in, yet his way is more agreeable to our English pronunciation and orthography; only the g may be left out in Pekin, Nankin, and some others.

Having made enquiry about what is mentioned by Father Martini of sowing their fields at Van-cheu with oyster-shells, to make new ones grow, I was told, that after they have taken out the oysters, they sprinkle the empty shells with urine, and throw them into the water, by which means there grow new oysters on the old shells.[332] Martini says he could never find a Latin name for the Tula Mogorin of the Portuguese; but I am sure it is the same with the Syringa arabica, flore pleno albo, of Parkinson. Martini also says that the kieu-yeu, or tallow-tree, bears a white flower, like that of the cherry-tree: But all that I have seen here bear spikes of small yellow flowers, like the julus of the Salix. The bean-broth, or mandarin-broth, so frequently mentioned in the Dutch embassy, and by other authors, is only an emulsion made of the seeds of sesamum with hot water.

[Footnote 332: This strange story may possibly be thus explained. At certain seasons, numerous minute oysters may be seen sticking to the shells of the old ones; and the Chinese may have thrown the emptied shells into the sea, in the highly probable expectation of these minute oysters continuing to live and grow. The circumstances in the text are absurd additions, either from ignorance or imposition. - E.]

The chief employments of the people here are fishing and agriculture. In fishing, they use several sorts of nets and lines as we do; but, as there are great banks of mud in some places, the fishermen have contrived a small frame, three or four feet long, not much larger than a hen-trough, and a little elevated at each end, to enable them to go more easily on these mud banks. Resting with one knee on the middle of one of these frames, and leaning his arms on a cross stick raised breast high, he uses the other foot on the mud to push the frame and himself forwards.

In their agricultural operations, all their fields on which any thing is to be cultivated, whether high or low, are formed into such plots or beds as may admit of retaining water over them when the cultivator thinks proper. The lands are tilled by ploughs drawn by one cow or buffalo; and when it is intended to sow rice, the soil is remarkably well prepared and cleared from all weeds, after which it is moistened into the state of a pulp, and smoothed by a frame drawn across, when the rice is sown very thick, and covered over with water, only to the height of two or three inches. When the seedling plants are six or eight inches long, they are all pulled up, and transplanted in straight lines into other fields, which are overflowed with water; and, when weeds grow up, they destroy them by covering them up in the interstices between the rows of rice, turning the mud over them with their hands.

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