in the production of a pound of tea. To-day, about one-half of
the tea consumed in the world is grown and manufactured upon
English territory, on plantations owned and superintended by
Englishmen, who have thoroughly mastered every detail of the art,
while nearly all the tea drank in Great Britain is English grown.
Twenty years ago, the suggestion that tea might yet be grown upon
a commercial scale in the United States was received with
derision by the Press and its readers; but one tea estate in
South Carolina has during the past year grown, manufactured, and
sold at a profit, several thousand of the tea of good quality,
which brought a price equal to that of foreign fine teas.

A natural taste for hot liquid foods and drinks is common to all
races of men, and they may be traced in the soups of meat and
fish, and in their decoctions or infusions of vegetable leaves,
seeds, barks, etc.

Hot "teas" were in habitual use as beverages among civilized
nations long before they ever heard of Chinese tea, of coffee, or
of cocoa. The English people, for instance, freely indulged in
infusions of Sage leaves, of leaves of the Wild Marjoram, the
Sloe, or blackthorn, the currant, the Speedwell, and of Sassafras
bark. In America, Sassafras leaves and bark were used for teas by
the early colonists, as were the leaves of Gaultheria
(Wintergreen), the Ledums (Labrador tea), Monarda (Horsemint,
Bee-balm, or Oswego tea), Ceanothus (New Jersey tea or red-root),
etc. Charles Lamb, in his essay upon Chimney Sweeps, mentions the
public house of Mr. Reed, on Fleet street in London, as a place
where Sassafras tea (and Salop) were still served daily to
customers in his time, about 1823. Mate, Yerba, or Paraguay tea