Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/460

452 weighed, papered, and bound with split ratan, the bill of the purchase has gone duly authenticated to the foreign factory, and the teas bid farewell to their native soil. The word is given, and each cooly, placing his two chests in the ropes swinging from his shoulder-bar, lifts them from the ground, and with a brisk walk conveys them on board the chop-boat, where they are carefully stowed away. As they are carried out of the hong, a fellow stands ready, and, as if about to stab the packages, thrusts at each one two sharp sticks with red ends, leaving them jammed between the ratan and the tea-box. One of these sticks is taken out when the chest leaves the chop-boat, and the other when it reaches the deck of the vessel; and as soon as one hundred chests are passed into the ship, the sticks are counted and thus serve as tallies. Should the two bundles not correspond, a chest is missing somewhere, and woe betide the blunderer!

In the busy season the chop-boats are seen pushing down the river with every favorable tide. As for pushing against the tide, no Chinaman ever thinks of such a thing, unless absolutely compelled,—the value of time being quite unknown in China. Coolly anchoring as soon as the tide is adverse, the crew fall to playing cards until it is time to get under way again. Nearly every chopboat contains a whole family, father, mother, and children,—sometimes an old grandparent, also, being included in the domestic circle,—and all assist in working. At the stern of the boat the wife has a little cooking-apparatus, and prepares the cheap rice for the squad of eager gormandizers, who bolt it in huge quantities without fear of indigestion. The family sit down to their repast on the deck; the men keep an eye to windward and a band on the tiller; the mother knots the cord that goes around the baby’s waist into an iron ring, and, feeling secure against the bantling’s falling overboard, chats sociably, occasionally enforcing a mild reproof to a vagabond son by a tap on the head with her chopstick. There is but one dish, rice, of a very ordinary sort and of a pink color, but all seem to thrive upon it. The meal over, the men smoke their pipes, and the wife washes her cooking utensils with water drawn from the muddy river, and then, strapping her infant to her back, overhauls the scanty wardrobe and mends the ragged garments.

It is interesting to mark how accurately the chop-boat is brought alongside of the ship for which it is destined. No matter how strong the wind blows or the tide runs, the sails are trimmed as occasion requires, and the big scull does its offices without ever the least mistake. The boat running under the quarter scrapes along the edge, the ropes are thrown, caught, and belayed, and the crew prepare for passing the cargo into the vessel's hold. The stevedores who load the ships are very active men. They have also good heads, and, measuring the length, breadth, and height of the hold, calculate pretty accurately how many chests the ship will carry, and the number of small boxes to be squeezed into narrow places. When the hold is full the hatch is fastened down and caulked, as exposure to the salt air injures the teas. The finest kinds are so delicate, indeed, that they cannot be exported by sea; for, however tightly sealed, they would deteriorate during the vovage. The very superior flavor noticed by travellers in the tea used at St. Petersburg is doubtless to be attributed in an important measure to its overland transportation, and its consequent escape from dampness; the large quantities consumed in Russia being, as before observed, all carried from the northwest of China to Kiakhta, whence it is distributed over the empire.

One of the most remarkable and interesting facts in the history of commerce is the comparatively recent origin of the tea trade. The leaves of the tea-plant were extensively used by the people of China and Japan centuries before it was known to Western nations. This is the