Page:EB1911 - Volume 26.djvu/511

Rh of prices for sugar during recent times has undoubtedly assisted in increasing the amount available for expenditure on tea. In Russia tea costs more to the consumer than in any country where modern transit by railway and steamer exists. The reason is the enormous proportion of the retail selling price which is exacted by the government by way of duty. But in return the government, with a paternal care for its people, makes absolutely certain that the tea reaches their hands as pure and unadulterated as when it first entered the country. Russian tea has always had a high reputation—largely n sentimental one, however. The quantity taken by the country is very large, but when spread over the enormous population the rate of consumption per person is not great. The extreme poverty of the great body of the people and the high price doubtless explain this. The method of use differs much from that followed in England. The samovar, or urn for boiling the water, is always much in evidence. Tea that makes a dark, strong liquor is preferred—not that such liquor is used, but that the greatest possible quantity of tea-coloured water may be drained from the teapot by refilling it over and over again from the samovar. The tea is generally drunk from glasses and while very hot, with a liberal addition of sugar and a flavouring of lemon. The method of use is

Fig. 6.—Diagram showing the alterations in the relative proportions of different growths of tea consumed during the 21 years ended the 31st of December 1907; the variations in the London average prices for Indian teas, and the changes in the English rate of duty. Vertical lines show the average monthly consumption in Great Britain and Ireland in millions of pounds. The diagonal line shows the average price per lb of all Indian tea sold in the London public auctions.

probably a more healthy one than that followed in many parts of the United Kingdom, where strong infusions of powerful teas are indulged in too frequently.

The United States of America and the great colonial dependencies follow generally the English way of using the beverage.

France, considering that it is England's nearest neighbour, has a remarkably small tea consumption: ·06 lb per person per annum, or about $1⁄100$th only of the English rate. The increase in consumption there has. been so small that it probably arises mainly from the increasing number of English and English-colonial visitors that spend portions of each year in the country.

Germany, and the Germanic peoples, take slightly more per person, but the statistics are rather indefinite. Holland, in Europe, comes next to England, and uses principally the product of her dependency Java. The other nations of Europe are very small consumers. Some of the peoples of eastern Europe take their tea with an admixture of rum. In Morocco and generally throughout North Africa there is a considerable demand for green tea, which is drunk hot out of glasses, the liquor being almost saturated with sugar and strongly flavoured with mint.

In China and Japan tea is generally drunk without any other qualifying or flavouring addition. Exceedingly delicate teas can therefore be used unimpaired. In Japan the ceremony of serving tea has, among the better classes, been raised to a high art, which the girls have to study at school for protracted periods.

In Mongolia and other parts of Central Asia tea is made into a kind of soup, somewhat on the lines of the following written regarding tea in Tibet by Colonel Waddell in his book Lhasa and its Mysteries. Writing of the Tibetan he states: "Asa beverage he drinks, all day long, cupfuls of hot buttered tea, which is really a soup or broth made by boiling tea-leaves with rancid butter and balls of dough, and adding a little salt, and straining—a decoction which was invariably nasty to our taste, though no doubt it is wholesome; for it is not merely a stimulating hot drink in the cold, but overcomes the danger of drinking unboiled water in a country where the water supply is dangerously polluted."

Geography of Tea.—The successful commercial production of tea on a large scale is confined to a strictly limited area enclosed by about 40 of latitude (5° S. to 35 N.) and about 73° of longitude (67° to 140 E.), while the consumption shows itself to a large extent to have strictly geographical limitations. The southern hemisphere ranks lightly in the matter of consumption, the only other country worth mentioning there besides the Australasian and Cape dependencies being Argentina. A straight line of latitude runs through all of these. In the northern hemisphere (excluding the races who consume their own produce) the material consumption of tea is in regions lying 40 N. and above it, but here there is an interesting subdivision to be made. In the United States of America and Canada, in some portions of Europe and of Asia, and along the north of Africa, there is a free_ use made of green or unfermented teas with pale, pungent infusions. The demand for such, as a general rule, lies principally in lower latitudes, while the farther north the consumer lives he seems to require more of the black or fermented tea of India, Ceylon or China, with the dark, thick, heavy liquor its infusion produces.

Transportation.—In the early part of the 19th century the tea shipped to England was destined to supply many countries, as London was then, and until comparatively recent times, the common warehouse and central market for the world, and England the common carrier. Throughout that century fairly steady and rapid progress was shown—especially in its earlier periods—in the trade from China, which reached its maximum in 1879. And it is here that some of the romance of commerce comes in. As the trade grew in importance, the advantages of rapid transit for the tea of new season's production began to be appreciated, and the slow and stately progress of the old East Indiaman became out of date. A type of vessel, specially designed for the rapid carrying of tea from China to England via the Cape of Good Hope, was introduced, known as the " China Clipper," and the competition was always keen as to which ship should make the most rapid passage. This culminated in the year 1866, when nine ships sailed almost simultaneously from Foochow, three of them crossing the bar in company. These three were all built by the same builders in Greenock, and came in ahead of all the others, making the long voyage of fully 16,000 m. in 99 days. They each docked in a separate dock in London upon the same day, and all within two hours of each other. The two leading ships had not seen each other for 70 days and met off the Lizard, from which point they ran a neck-and-neck race before a strong westerly wind, with every rag of canvas set.

The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 soon changed the course of all trade with the East, and in a few years the sending of tea per sailing ship round the Cape of Good Hope was a thing of the past. Romance was no more, although there was extreme competition in building steamers with great power and speed to land their cargoes rapidly by the new route. This reached its height in 1882, when the s.s. "Stirling Castle" made the phenomenal run, for those times, of 28 days from Woosung to London.

But England, which formerly supplied almost everything to her own colonies and to many foreign countries besides, has, under the modified conditions of abundant steam tonnage everywhere, become less and less of a distributive country. Consequently, direct shipments are made now from the countries of production to those of consumption. America gets its tea largely through its western seaboard from China, Japan, Ceylon and India, while not a little is reaching it of recent years by steamers running direct from those countries via the Suez Canal to New York. The Australian demand is fed by steamers from Calcutta and Colombo, with some additions direct from China and Java.

The extensive Russian trade is now largely conducted over the Siberian railroad, and this, next to the transit to London, represents the largest volume of tea traffic passing in one channel. This route has displaced much of the protracted caravan business through Manchuria and Mongolia. A most interesting and adventurous episode in connexion with Russian trade was the effort repeated over several successive years by the late Captain Wiggins to convey tea entirely by sea from Chinese ports around the North Cape and through the Kara Sea to the Obi and Yenisei rivers. When successful, the journey, although about seven times the mileage of the old direct caravan route, took four months instead of eighteen, and was of course much less expensive.

The only protracted camel or mule caravan journeys remaining in connexion with the tea trade are those in Persia and Morocco, where the conservatism of race delays the introduction of even wheel roads, not to mention railways.