From the dragon court to the land of the lion

Tea Travels from China to Ceylon

I want people to treasure tea. The worlds best is grown here in Ceylon, now called Sri Lanka. We are not using it to help our country. We are using it only to illuminate others. But that is not what I am after. Tea must illuminate our country and the lives of our people. Merrill J Fernando

To understand the significance of Merrill Fernando’s achievements and of Dilmah Tea’s success as an international tea company, it is crucial to place Ceylon tea in its historical context. We need to recognise that for hundreds of years, China held the monopoly in tea production, that the English East India Company maintained a stranglehold monopoly on the trading of that tea to Britain, that the British planters and traders established systems in the 19th and early 20th centuries which kept the industry tightly in British hands, which brought enormous wealth to many Victorian Britons, and which still permeate the industry in India and Ceylon today. Until the 1950s, the local people of Ceylon had little chance of attaining any position of importance or power in the industry. Tasters, brokers and managing agents were almost all British. Even after Ceylon won its independence from Britain in 1948, the trade did not visibly alter. But now, after 50 years of refusing to accept unfair or unreasonable rules and regulations, of standing up for equality, of always following his principles, and of planning for the future, Merrill has proved that things can change. He has proved that the old systems are not necessarily the best, that Sri Lankan-owned companies can survive and grow where companies elsewhere have failed. More important than anything, he has proved that a company can achieve phenomenal financial success and still trade ethically for the good of both employers and employees. Today, Merrill is Chairman of a group of companies worth millions of dollars that grow, process, bulking, pack, broker and market tea, as well as having

control over other essential, integrated activities such as transportation, warehousing, printing and packaging.

But the journey that eventually brings us to Dilmah’s 21st century success started almost 5000 years ago in China in the 3rd century BC. From there tea travelled overland to the countries to the north, east and west of China, across the East China Sea to Japan, through treacherous oceans to Europe and North America until it became the everyday beverage of millions of people all over the world.

Tea Begins its Journey from China to Foreign Lands

The Chinese reliance on tea for health and for pleasure is said to date back to the days of the legendary Chinese emperor, Shen Nung, who discovered the plant and its many benefits in approximately 2737 BC.

Stories tell of the emperor’s experiments with herbs and plants and describe how he enjoyed the aroma, flavour and refreshing properties of the tea infusion when a few stray leaves from a wild tea tree fluttered one breezy day into his pot of simmering drinking water. The legend then tells how he encouraged his people to cultivate and drink the herbal brew as a daily health-giving beverage. It seems that the plants first grew in the swooping valleys and slopes of the Himalayan foothills in China’s Yunnan province and the people who lived there drank and traded it, usually compressed into cakes or bricks, or packed inside bamboo stems. Their ancient trading routes carried the tea northwards into Sichuan province, Tibet and Mongolia, and westwards along the silk road to Samarkand and the Turkic lands beyond. Tea was traded for horses to the nomadic tribes of the Tibetan Plateau and the more westerly regions of China. By the days of the Tang Dynasty (618-907AD), fifteen of China’s southern provinces (the areas which are still today the main producing regions) were all growing tea. The trading of tea, salt, textiles and other essential commodities were imperial monopolies and underpinned the country’s economic policy. By the 11th century, Fujian Province alone was producing roughly 7 million pounds of tea a year. Much of this, and similar quantities produced in other regions, was consumed by the Chinese themselves but exports also brought vast wealth to the state and to the merchants who were licensed to trade it.

In the 8th century AD, Japanese Buddhist monks travelled across the East China Sea to study in Chinese monasteries and temples where tea sustained the Buddhist priests through their long periods of prayer and meditation. Having discovered and enjoyed the revitalising benefits of the beverage, the Japanese monks took tea seeds home, planted them in monastery gardens and taught their brother priests to cultivate the leaf and enjoy the green infusion. In the 12th century AD, the fostering of closer relations with China spurred a widespread increase in the popularity of tea drinking in Japan and a fashion for whisking powdered tea into hot water – the method of brewing then favoured by the Chinese. Over the centuries, the Chinese had brewed

Over the centuries, the Chinese had brewed and served their tea in many different ways - boiling the freshly picked leaves in water; roasting and crushing compressed cakes of tea and steeping in hot water; or flavouring crushed and steeped leaf with salt, onions, orange peel, ginger, peach leaves or jasmine flowers.

and served their tea in many different ways - boiling the freshly picked leaves in water; roasting and crushing compressed cakes of tea and steeping in hot water; or flavouring crushed and steeped leaf with salt, onions, orange peel, ginger, peach leaves or jasmine flowers. During the Song Dynasty (960AD - 1279AD), a new fashion developed - the young leaves were carefully gathered, stored in airtight ceramic jars for several months and then ground to a fine powder which gave a frothy, bright green liquid when whisked into hot water. The Japanese copied this ‘Matcha style’ tea, set in place strict rules governing its preparation and service, and gradually developed a tea philosophy based on Zen Buddhism that became a ritualised ceremony known as Cha-no-yu or ‘The Way of Tea’.

The ‘Japanese green tea ceremony’ developed during the Muromachi Period (1392-1568) and is still practised today as a spiritual exercise and entertainment during which those taking part aim to attain a harmony with those around them and with the wider universe. The tea master

must choose all the tea utensils, the wall hangings, the flower vase and the rough ceramic tea bowls according to detailed guidelines and, once guests have been welcomed and have taken their places, the tea is prepared, served and drunk according to a set of carefully choreographed movements. The slow grace and meditative smoothness of the ceremony creates a sense of peace and calm – a valuable antidote to the frantic activities of everyday life.

European Customers

Although Marco Polo had travelled extensively in China in the 13th century AD, there was little contact between the Chinese and European nations prior to the 17th century and tea does not seem to have provoked more than a passing interest. In 1559, Italian Giambattista Ramusio wrote that a Persian acquaintance had told him about Chai Catai, a Chinese herb used by natives of Sichaun province as a medicinal tonic for gout and stomach complaints. By the middle of the 16th century, the Portuguese had established a trading base on the Canton river, and the Dutch shipped their first consignment of tea to Amsterdam in 1606. With new trading agreements set in place between China and those two great seafaring nations, ships regularly set sail out of China’s south eastern ports of Macau, Fuzhou, Hangzhou, Guanzhou, Hankow and Shanghai to satisfy the thirst of the new European consumers. From Amsterdam and Lisbon the tea was re-exported to other European countries along with the fine porcelain tea bowls, saucers, teapots and other exotic oriental goods that had arrived on the same ships. Meanwhile, although the English East India Company was on good terms with the Chinese court, they were embroiled in a bitter struggle with the Dutch for supremacy of the spice trade and when they lost, they were forced to withdraw to bases in and around southern India. Left without any direct links to China, they had no chance of developing an English tea trade and the first tea to arrive in London in 1657 was brought into the docks on board a Dutch

East Indiamen. It was not until 1669 that the first consignment of 143 pounds of tea, ordered and shipped by the English East India, was unloaded in the London docks.

The chests of tea that made up those early shipments held both black and green leaf, but the Chinese traditionally drink green tea and the manufacture of black tea had only developed in the early 17th century specifically to meet the demands of the country’s growing overseas trade. Although cakes of compressed teas travelled well and satisfied the requirements of customers in Tibet, Mongolia, Siberia and the northern Chinese provinces, the Europeans wanted the loose leaf tea that the Chinese were themselves now drinking. But the Chinese producers found that loose green teas did not keep well during the long journeys by sea, and too many complaints and wasted cargoes prompted the tea manufacturers to find some way of producing a tea that travelled more successfully. In the tea factories of Wuyi in Fujian province, where much of the export tea was made, a new method of manufacture was introduced during which the leaf was rolled, oxidised and then dried in large heated chambers built over wood-burning ovens. The smouldering fires were fuelled with pine wood from the surrounding forests and so the brown leafed tea acquired a slightly smoky aroma and flavour – the forerunner of the smoky Lapsang Souchongs that we know today.

It was these black teas that also became popular in Russia. The Russians had first learned about tea in the early 17th century when the Mongolian ruler, Altyun-Khan, sent a gift of tea to Tsar Michael Fedorovich. While the Dutch and the Portuguese were receiving their tea by sea, deliveries into Mongolia, Siberia and Russia arrived overland, hauled or carried by camels. At Kashgar, just outside the Great Wall on the Chinese Gobi Desert border, the Russian traders made their initial selection of the required black, slightly smoky teas from Wuyi and transported them northwards to Urga in Mongolia. The caravans of two or three hundred camels, with each beast carrying or hauling roughly six hundred pounds of tea, travelled in winter and spring from Kalgan, through the Gobi desert, and onward to Urga, where the teas were inspected. From here the camel train slowly made its way up to the town of Usk Kayakhta on the frontier between Mongolia and Russia and the boxes of tea were once again inspected, then sewn into raw bull hides (called tsybics), marked and loaded onto carts or sledges. The entire journey from China to St Petersburg took at least six months.

With the price of both black and green teas too high for the working classes to afford, they quickly became the luxury indulgence of the moneyed classes at the Russian court and in Western Europe. Royal families, aristocrats and wealthy civil servants brewed tea using dainty Chinese porcelain pots. They served it in tiny Chinese porcelain bowls into which they dropped very small pieces of sugar and sometimes a dash of cold milk or cream. As the tea was far too valuable to entrust to the servants, the only role of the maids and footmen was to set furniture and tea equipage ready, bring up from the kitchen a large black kettle of hot water to decant into the more elegant and decorative silver kettle, and clear dishes and furniture away after the tea drinking was over. Although aristocrats and members of the royal families of Holland, France, Spain and Portugal continued to drink tea, the infusion never became the drink of the working classes in those countries, coffee instead becoming their preferred beverage. In Russia, the samovar developed from the Mongolian cooking pot as a means of offering strong black tea to family and friends throughout the day, and tea became the drink of the people. In England, tea became a way of life.

A New North American Beverage

In 1650, several years before London became aware of tea’s existence, Dutchman Peter Styversant is said to have introduced tea to the Dutch colony that had recently settled in New Amsterdam. When the British snatched the

Although the good people of Boston and other east coast cities turned their backs on tea for a while, and although Britain lost her North American colony shortly afterwards as a result of the War of Independence, the American people did not actually stop drinking tea. On the contrary, tea parties and tea drinking in America were as important over the coming years as they were in Britain.

city from the Dutch in1674 and renamed it New York, they found that what was to them a relatively new drink was already well established among the European settlers. And, as more and more migrants made their way across the Atlantic from Europe to North America to start a new life in a new land, families packed teapots, tea bowls, tea jars and a supply of leaf among the most treasured possessions that accompanied them.

The ports on America’s east coast became important trading posts for tea and tea wares and, by the middle of the 18th century, cities such as Philadelphia and Boston had acquired reputations as fashionable centres where upper class tea parties were regularly held and the manners people displayed while drinking tea revealed much about social status and breeding. By the 1760s, consumption

in the colony had reached over a million pounds a year but the trading of tea was still in the control of the English East India Company and, since King George III and his government insisted on imposing heavy taxes on the imported goods, the Americans became more and more rebellious. When an increased tax of 3 pence a pound was imposed on tea, the North Americans were incensed and refused to pay. Tea exports to the colony dropped, valuable stocks sat unsold and the Americans meanwhile smuggled tea in from other sources. The East India Company in England sought permission from the government to send some of its surplus to the America market but when the ships arrived in Philadelphia and New York, they were not allowed to dock. In Charleston, cargoes were seized by customs officials while, in Boston, a band of local men dressed as Native Americans clambered on board three ships that had sailed into port loaded with tea. Brandishing hatchets that were used to split open the tea chests and vowing never to drink English tea ever again, the demonstrators hurled the entire cargo of tea into Boston harbour. Although the good people of Boston and other east coast cities turned their backs on tea for a while, and although Britain lost her North American colony shortly afterwards as a result of the War of Independence, the American people did not actually stop drinking tea. On the contrary, tea parties and tea drinking in America were as important over the coming years as they were in Britain.

The English Learn to Love Tea

By the mid 18th century, tea was being consumed by the wealthy throughout England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Tea had replaced

While the early planters were hacking down jungle, planting more tea bushes and manufacturing more black tea to send home to the London auctions, the British bacik home were becoming a nation of tea drinkers. Tea was drunk at breakfast, employers made provision for tea breaks at work, and afternoon tea was fashionable at every level of British society.

ale and beer at breakfast, was the accepted refreshment during the day, was served after dinner to settle the stomach and help the digestion, and had become a status symbol among the upper classes who often chose to have family portraits painted to show family members grouped around the carefully arranged tea table. All the tea being consumed at that time was imported from China and, since the East India Company held a monopoly of imports from the Orient, it was on East India Company ships that the tea sailed into the London docks. The company had at last managed to gain access to the Chinese merchants and had started to bring home regular consignments of tea which were warehoused and sold in Company offices in the City of London. Auctions ‘by the candle’ made the tea available to apothecaries and merchants who sold it alongside herbal remedies, general provisions and luxury goods. At such sales, a candle was lit and when one inch of wax had burned away, the auctioneer brought down his hammer to end the bidding.

The East India Company held on tightly to its monopoly, despite competition from other ambitious groups of merchants, and continued to deal with selected Chinese merchants in Canton where the English were now based. Various duties, taxes, payments for certification and bribes (that had to be paid before the cargoes could set sail) kept the cost of tea to the Company high. With no alternative supply and with additional taxation imposed by the government in London, tea remained an expensive luxury. In 1813, the East India Company’s monopoly was due for renewal and those in favour of free trade argued bitterly that the Company used unacceptable strategies for keeping prices high and stocks restricted. One opponent wrote in 1824 that the Company had “most scandalously abused the monopoly of which they are now in possession …. the monopoly of the tea trade enjoyed by the East India Company costs the people of this country, on average, not less than two

million two hundred thousand pounds sterling a year!” Eventually in 1834, after almost 250 years of exclusive trading rights, the East India Company’s monopoly was broken, its last auction was held in 1835, and the British tea trade was now free to hold its own auctions, and free to explore new sources of tea.

By the early 19th century, consumption in Britain had increased to such a level as to make the value of payments to China a cause for concern, if not alarm. Vast amounts of British silver were being paid to China for tea, but China wanted nothing in return from Britain – except opium which was being grown on British territory in Assam, India. Despite the fact that it was illegal in China, British traders managed to export large amounts of the drug to Chinese traders by a devious and complicated route of brokers, shipping agents and middlemen. But the Chinese emperor soon declared that enough was enough and in 1839, ordered 20,000 chests to be deposited on the beach and left for the tide to wash away. From this point, relations between the two nations became more and more strained and in 1840, the Britain declared war on China and China retaliated by banning the export of tea to Britain. It was just as well, then, that the British had already started looking for new locations where tea could be cultivated and manufactured.

The First British Tea Plantations

The British knew that the tea plant was already growing successfully in Japan and Java, and that experimental plantings had been established in Brazil and North America. They were also aware of suggestions made some years before that the plant might be successfully nurtured in Sumatra. They knew too that, in the 1780s, British botanist Joseph Banks had reported that he considered India eminently suitable for the cultivation of the plant. Stripped of their right to trade in 1839, and acting now as managing agents for the British government, the employees of East India Company were in control of the administration of vast regions of India. While they had traded with China, there had been no need to look elsewhere for supplies of tea, but now that their interests lay in India, it was the obvious place to consider as a suitable location for tea plantations. When the plant was found growing wild in Assam, further research was encouraged.

With direction from India’s Governor General, Lord William Bentinck, a committee was set up in 1834 to examine the very real possibility of growing tea in Assam. Despite wild tea plants having been discovered growing in the Assam jungle, seeds were acquired from China – at great risk due to Chinese determination that their secrets were not to be discovered at any cost – and the first attempts at tea cultivation were made in Calcutta’s Botanical Gardens under the direction of Joseph Banks. The new plants were sent up to Assam where C A Bruce had been put in charge of ‘Tea Forests’ and was working to cultivate both Chinese and native plants. In 1837, samples of the first manufactured tea were sent to London where they were tasted and well received and, when 12 chests of Assam tea arrived in London in November 1838, the tea was declared good enough to compete with any China teas. In 1839, the Assam Company was established, other speculators acquired leases to tracts of land in Assam, new plantations were laid out and increasing volumes of tea were shipped from India to the London auctions. In the north, parts of Terai, Dooars, Chittagong, Sylhet, Darjeeling, and the Kangra Valley were developed while in the south, new plantations were laid out in Travancore and Nilgiri. Tea consumption

in Britain steadily increased from 1lb 4 oz per head in 1831 to 2lb 12oz in 1861, the planters grew rich and the merchants made small fortunes.

While the early planters were hacking down jungle, planting more tea bushes and manufacturing more black tea to send home to the London auctions, the British bacik home were becoming a nation of tea drinkers. Tea was drunk at breakfast, employers made provision for tea breaks at work, and ‘afternoon tea’ was fashionable at every level of British society. What had started in the late 1830s as a mid-afternoon refreshment for Anna Maria, 7th Duchess of Bedford, perfectly filled the long gap between an inconsequential luncheon at midday and dinner at 7.30 or 8 pm, and groups of wealthy people in palaces, stately homes, and middle class mansions invited friends and acquaintances to take tea with them in their elegant drawing rooms and gardens. Elsewhere, in rural cottages and humble Victorian terraced houses, the British working classes also paused for a while in the middle of the afternoon, put the kettle on to boil and then brewed their pots of afternoon tea. By the 1870s, cookery books, books of etiquette, and manuals of household management gave instructions as to how to organise a tea party, how to brew and serve the tea, what food to offer, what ladies should wear, what time guests should arrive and how long they should stay at such a party. No wonder then that the tea trade in India was doing so well and that the planters were constantly searching for new land on which to grow yet more tea.

Tea Replaces Coffee in Ceylon

And so the journey now brings us to Ceylon. The beautiful, teardropshaped island was colonised by the Portuguese in the late 16th century, then dominated by the Dutch from 1658 until 1796 when the British East India Company, acting as representatives of the British government, took control and shared administration of the country with the Governor. In 1801, the island became the first British ‘crown colony’. Under the Dutch, Ceylon had gained importance as the producer of the world’s supply

Tea was not unknown in the island and was referred to in 1782 by the Dutchman Christian Wolf who said in a letter, “tea and some other sorts of elegant aromatic are to be found here. In 1796, a certain Captain Percival found that the tea plant has also been discovered native in the forests of the island. It grows spontaneously in the neighbourhood of Trincomalee and other northern parts of Ceylon.

of cinnamon, but the British Governor decided to free up some of the smaller cinnamon gardens for the cultivation of other crops. Production on the larger plantations subsequently decreased due to the overstripping of bark, an attempt to set up public auctions failed, the East Indian Company’s Ceylon cinnamon monopoly ended and prices fell. So, a decision was taken to plant coffee instead and vast areas of jungle and wild forest were cleared in order to make way for new plantations. Money was injected from London, land was sold to new planters and cheap labour was imported from South India. Local Sinhalese craftsmen were employed to hack down trees and construct essential buildings, and a network of bullock cart transportation was established by Singhalese villagers to carry the coffee beans down to Colombo for drying and export. Tea was not unknown in the island and was referred to in 1782 by the Dutchman Christian Wolf who said in a letter, “tea and some other sorts of elegant aromatic are to be found here”. In 1796, a certain Captain Percival found that “the tea plant has also been discovered native in the forests of the island. It grows spontaneously in the neighbourhood of

Trincomalee and other northern parts of Ceylon.” He had apparently been told that “the soldiers of the garrison frequently used it. They cut the branches and twigs and hang them in the sun to dry; then they take off the leaves and put them into a kettle to boil to extract the juice, which has all the properties of the Chinese leaf.” It had also been suggested as a potential crop and in a letter written in 1816, the Reverend Ringletaube advised a friend who had recently arrived in Ceylon, “In the garden of Mr Cripp, Master Attendant at Colombo, I am told grows the TEA PLANT. Were you to offer that you would introduce the culture of this most valuable PLANT in Ceylon, somewhere near Colombo (for instance at Caltura where Government has a piece of ground well fitted) perhaps the offer would take.”

In 1839, the first tea seeds were planted at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Peradeniya near Kandy and some of the plants grown here were subsequently planted in Nuwara Eliya. Two German brothers, Gabriel and Maurice Worms, acquired seeds from China and planted them among the coffee bushes on their Rothschild and Sogama estates. It seems that they also attempted to manufacture tea there but found it such an expensive venture that they decided to concentrate on coffee. Eight acres of land were also planted with China seed in 1864 on the Barra estate but were not developed until the 1880s. In his A Hundred Years of Ceylon Tea, D M Forrest refers to the story that James Taylor himself had experimented with tea manufacture in about 1866 using leaves from old tea bushes in his garden, which prompted Forrest to muse, “Does this suggest that perhaps more of the primeval coffee-men than we now realise grew a few plants round their bungalows and even plucked and consumed the proceeds…?”

It is, of course, James Taylor who features most clearly in the earliest days of serious tea cultivation in Ceylon. Taylor was originally recruited in 1851 by Messrs G & J A Hadden to work as superintendent on their coffee plantations. His first job was at Narenghena estate where he worked under the supervision of George Pride and was then transferred to neighbouring Loolecondera, an estate that was newly planted out with coffee. When Pride died in 1857, the estate was sold to Keir, Dundas & Co and one of the new owners, John Gavin, turned out to be a man with vision and a good business head. He and the two men he handed over to when he retired in 1862, D G B Harrison and Martin Leake, recognised a need for diversification and Taylor later wrote of them, “It was they who allowed me to plant cinchona and ordered me to plant tea and it was they who paid for these things and stood the risk of failure.” Taylor acquired seeds from Peradeniya Botanic Gardens in 1867 and planted them along the roadside of the coffee plantation in neat rows. When they grew successfully, more seed was brought from Assam and 20 acres of newly cleared land was planted.

Taylor experimented with manufacturing methods on the verandah of his bungalow, witnessed by E G Harding who worked on a nearby estate: “The factory was in the bungalow. The leaf was rolled on tables on the verandah by hand, i.e. from wrists to elbow, while the firing was done in chulas or clay stoves, over charcoal fires, with wire trays to hold the leaf. The result was a delicious tea which brought up locally at Rupees 1.50 per lb.” Taylor was trying to produce a tea with a similar flavour to teas produced in China but he wrote, “I saw that I had been making the teas rightly enough but as I could not get it to taste like China tea sold in the shops, I was always varying my process and spoiling batches of tea.” In 1870, the first samples of made tea, rolled, oxidised and pan-fired by Taylor were sent for sale on the Kandy market, and three years later, 23 lb were sent to the London auctions and valued at 3s 9d per lb. In March 1872, he wrote in a letter, “I have a machine of my own invention being made in Kandy for rolling tea which I think will be successful. If so, we cannot help making a profit on tea, if it grows of fair quality in this country. The picking and gathering of the leaves and the rolling are the greatest expenses in the production; the rolling costs nearly as much as the gathering.” By the end of the year he had set up a fully-equipped factory that included his roller.

By now, Ceylon’s coffee crop was beginning to suffer from Hemileia vastatrix, the Coffee Rust fungus, which was first noticed in 1869 and was to bring about the downfall of the coffee plantations on the island. It was impossible for the planters to know at that stage whether their plants would survive or not. Some planters uprooted all their stock and planted tea bushes, cinchona, cardamom, cocoa or rubber instead; some applied recommended treatments and waited; some wavered between optimistic expectations of recovery and despair at the rapid progress of the Rust.

Taylor was still not convinced that tea would prove to be a successful crop and continued to experiment with cinchona and cinnamon. But his success with tea had been enough to instil a sense of general optimism amongst the planters so that, when it became clear by the mid 1870s that coffee was not going to survive, they turned with a fair amount of confidence to tea. A quotation from the time hints at the possibilities for the future: “Mr Taylor of Loolecondera, than whom a more intelligent practical planter does not exist, contents himself with a very moderate yield. He does not distress his bushes and he tops the market, my conviction is that he shows a larger profit per acre with his 350 lbs than others do with 600.”

In 1867, only 10 acres were recorded as being under tea. By 1875, 1,080 acres had been planted. In some cases tea was planted under coffee bushes whose lower branches were chopped off to facilitate the new crop’s growth; in others, land was specially cleared to create new plantations. The preparation of new tracts of land was exhausting, physically demanding work. Elephants were employed to heave trees and tangled roots out of the way, dense undergrowth was burned, drainage ditches were dug and roads built, factories were planned and constructed, and planting areas were marked out with stakes and rope on the rough, steep ground. With the sudden increased demand for planting material, there was a shortage of seed and, when Peradeniya and Hakgala Botanical Gardens could not supply enough, more was sought from India and new companies were set up in Ceylon with the sole purpose of growing new stock.

And so, the foundations were laid. By the mid 1890s, coffee had almost totally disappeared from the Ceylon plantations and, while some planters gave up in despair and poverty, others followed the example of the tea pioneers and turned their land over to tea. Old coffee factories were converted and new mechanised tea factories were equipped with rollers and roll breakers, sifters and dryers, to speed up the manufacture of the increasing quantities of leaf being harvested from the newly established plants.

Ceylon had become an island of tea.

I have a machine of my own invention being made in Kandy for rolling tea which I think will be successful. If so, we cannot help making a profit on tea, if it grows of fair quality in this country. The picking and gathering of the leaves and the rolling are the greatest expenses in the production; the rolling costs nearly as much as the gathering