Page:Stryker's American Register and Magazine, Volume 6, 1851.djvu/356

350 the prices higher; little comparatively therefore has been purchased for English consumption, and if there be any doubt of the black teas having proved remunerative to the native merchants this last year, it is, on the other hand, admitted by the tea men, that the green teas have yielded a large profit.

The proportions of black and green tea purchased by the only parties in the market, the British and Americans, are as follows:

British.—Black tea,. American.— Excess in favor of British, British.—Green tea,. American.— Excess in favor of Americans, 11,486,334 lbs. 315,033 lbs. 11,171,301 lbs. 1,827,265 lbs. 2,234,850 lbs. 407,585 lbs.

An effort has been made calculated materially to promote the rapid extension of the tea trade. The system adopted at Canton has been commenced at Shanghae, of sending parties under agreement with our merchants into the tea districts with ready cash to purchase certain descriptions of teas, and this will be one of the surest means of securing a fair proportion of the best qualities for the Shanghae market, the great desideratum hitherto. The progress of the tea trade here has been sufficiently rapid, and the actual quantity exported sufficiently large to make the relative facilities and advantages of shipments at Shanghae and Canton a question of importance both in a commercial and political sense. To have drawn to the port something like a quarter of the annual shipments of tea in four years from so powerful a rival, with all the advantages derived from capital and long prescriptive custom still in favor of Canton, argues local facilities of great value.

One of the chief of these appears to be, if not nearer proximity to, at least more easy and less costly transit from the districts producing the black and green teas.

Of the Congous known to the foreign merchants as the Moning, Ningchew, and Hohow teas, the taste for which has so greatly increased of late years, that their consumption, I am informed, has attained nearly 28,000,000 lbs., about 8,000,000 lbs. have been purchased in Shanghae during the last year.

The black teas exported under the East India Company were believed to be the produce almost entirely of the Bohea Hills, in the Province of Fo-Kien. Later information would lead to the conviction that few of the provinces of China are without tea cultivation south of the Yang-tse-kiang, though the more western territories probably supply no portion for exportation. From all the information which has reached me I believe the foreign mar-