plant at three years from the seed, but a full crop is not
expected until the plant is about six years old. "A Chinese
plantation of tea, seen from a distance," says Mr. Fortune,
"looks like a little shrubbery of evergreens." And when
journeying in the Bohea black tea country, he remarks--"As we
threaded our way amongst the hills I observed tea gathers busily
employed on all the hill sides where the plantations were. They
seemed a contended and happy race; the joke and merry laugh were
going around; and some of them were singing as gaily as the birds
in the old trees about the temples." There is an old Chinese
ballad of some 30 stanzas, which pictures the reflections of a
Chinese maiden who is employed in picking tea in early spring,
from we select a few verses, literally translated.


"Our household dwells amidst ten thousand hills,
Where the tea, north and south of the village, abundantly grows;
From Chinshe to Kuhyu, unceasingly hurried,
Every morning I must early rise to do my task of tea.

"By earliest dawn, I at my toilet, only half dress my hair,
And seizing my basket, pass the door, while yet the mist is thick;
The little maids and graver dames hand in hand winding along,
Ask me, 'which steep of Sunglo do you climb to-day?'

"My splint-basket slung on my arm, my hair adorned with flowers,
I go to the side of the Sunglo hills, and pick the mountain tea.
Amid the pathway going, we sisters one another rally, And
laughing, I point to younder village--'there's our house!'