busy putting together or
manufacturing new tea-boxes, lining them carefully with lead, which
needs close attention, as the smallest hole in the lining of a tea-chest
will cause serious injury to the contents.

When spring opens and the first glorious "flush" is on the bushes, there
is a readjustment of labour. Pluckers begin to gather the leaf, and as
the season advances more pluckers are needed, till possibly every man,
woman and child may be called on for this operation alone, it being so
important that the leaf flush does not get ahead and out of control, so
that the leaf would get tough and hard and less fit for manufacture;
but cultivation is almost equally important, and every available
labourer is kept hard at it.

What a pleasure it is to watch a good expert workman, be he carpenter,
bricklayer, ploughman, blacksmith, or only an Irish navvy. In even the
humblest of these callings the evidence of much training, practice or
long apprenticeship is noticeable. To an amateur who has tried such work
himself it will soon be apparent how crude his efforts are, how little
he knows of the apparently simple operation. The navvy seems to work
slowly; but he knows well, because his task is a day-long one, that his
forces must be economised, that over-exertion must be avoided. This
lesson was brought home to me when exasperated by the seeming laziness
of the coolie cultivators, I would seize a man's hoe and fly at the
work, hoe vigorously for perhaps five minutes, swear at the man for his
lack of strenuousness, then retire and find myself puffing and blowing
and almost in a state of collapse.

If an addition or extension is being made to the garden, the already cut
jungle has to be burnt and the ground cleared in early spring, the soil
broken up and staked: that is, small sticks put in regular rows and
intervals to show where the young plants are to be put. Then when the
rains have properly set in the actual planting begins. This is a work
that requires a lot of labour and close and careful superintendence.
Imagine what it means to plant out 100 acres of ground, the plants set
only three or four feet apart! The right plucking of the leaf calls for
equally careful looking after. The women are paid by the amount or
weight they pluck, so they are very liable to pluck carelessly and so
damage the succeeding flush, or they may gather a lot of old leaf
unsuited for manufacturing purposes. In short, every detail of work,
even cultivation, demands close supervision and the whole attention of
the planter.

When the new-plucked leaf is brought home it is spread out to wither in
suitably-built sheds. (Here begins the tea-maker's responsibility.) Then
it must be rolled, by hand or by machinery; fermented, and fired or
dried over charcoal ovens; separated in its different classes, the
younger the leaf bud the more valuable the tea. It is then packed in
boxes for market, and sampled by the planter. He does this by weighing a
tiny quantity of each class or grade of tea into separate cups, pouring
boiling water on them, and then tasting the liquor by sipping a little
into the mouth, not to be swallowed, but ejected again.

[Illustration: PLUCKING TEA LEAF.]

All this will give an idea of the variety of duties of a tea-planter. He
has no time for shooting, polo, or visiting during the busy season. But
at mid-winter the great annual Mela takes place at the station, the
local seat of Government. The Mela lasts a couple of weeks, and it is a
season of fun and jollity with both planters and natives. There were two
or three social clubs in Silchar; horse and pony racing, polo, cricket
and football filled the day, dinner and sociability the night; and what
nights! The amount of liquor consumed at these meetings was almost
incredible.

Nothing can look more beautiful or more gratifying to the eye of the
owner than a tract of tea, pruned level as a table and topped with new
fresh young leaf-shoots, four to eight inches high, in full flush, ready
for the pluckers' nimble fingers.

At the end of one year I was offered and accepted the position of
assistant at a Sylhet garden, called Kessoregool, the property
consisting of three distinct gardens, the principal one being directly
overseered by the manager, an American. He, of course, was my superior.
My charge was the Lucky Cherra Gardens, some few miles away. There I
spent two years, learning what I could of the business, but without the
advantage of European society; in fact, the Burra Sahib and myself were
almost the only whites in the district, and as he was drunk quite half
the time, and we did not pull very well together, I was left to my own
resources. I found amusement in various ways. There was no polo, but
some of the native zemindars (landed proprietors) were always ready to
get up a beat for leopards, tigers, deer and pig. Their method was
simply to drive the game into a net corral and spear them to death. The
Government Keddas, under Colonel Nuttal, were also not far away in hill
Tipperah, and it was intensely interesting to watch operations. Close to
my garden also was a sacred pool and a very beautiful waterfall. This
was visited twice a year by immense numbers of natives, some from great
distances, for it was a famous and renowned place of pilgrimage. It
could only be approached through my garden; and as there was no wagon
road, the pilgrims were always open to inspection, so to speak; and they
were well worth inspection, as among them were many races, all ages,
both sexes, every caste or jat; robes, turbans and cupras of every shape
and colour; fakirs and wonder-workers, and beggars galore. Here, and on
such an occasion only, could the sahib see face to face the harems of
the wealthy natives, consisting of women who at no other time showed
themselves out of doors. Being the only sahib present I had all the "fun
of the fair" to myself, but always regretted the want of a companion to
share it with me.

As to wild game, there were lots of jungle fowl (original stock of our
familiar barn-door cocks and hens), a few pigeons, Argus pheasants,
small barking deer, pigs, sambur, barrasingha, metnas, crocodiles,
leopards, tigers, bears and elephants; but I had little time for
shooting and it was expensive work, the jungle being so thick that
riding elephants were quite necessary. If keen enough, one could sit all
night on a machan in a tree near a recent "kill," on the chance of
Stripes showing himself; but it never appealed to me much, that kind of
sport. If a tiger was raiding the cattle I would poison the "kill" with
strychnine. In this way I secured several very fine animals, getting two
at one time, so successfully poisoned that their bodies actually lay on
the dead bullock. One time I shot an enormous python, some eighteen feet
in length, which took several men to carry home. Monkeys were plentiful
and of several kinds. I was very fond of wandering amongst the high-tree
jungle and quietly watching their antics. In the dense forest there is
little undergrowth, so that one can move about freely and study the
extraordinary forms of vegetation displayed. Ticks and leeches are to
be dreaded--a perfect nuisance. If you sit down or pause for a few
moments where no leeches are in sight, suddenly and quickly they will
appear marching on you, or at you, at a gallop.

The popular idea of a wealth of flowers in tropical jungles is a
misconception. In tree jungle no flowers are to be found, or at any rate
they are not visible. But if one can by some means attain an elevation
and so be able to overlook the tree-tops, he will probably be rewarded
with a wonderful display, as many jungle trees are glorified with crowns
of gorgeous colours. There will he also discover the honey-suckers,
moths, butterflies, the beetles, and all the other insect brood which he
had also vainly looked for before. The fruits are likewise borne aloft,
and therefore at the proper time these tree-tops will be the haunt of
the monkeys, the parrots, the bats, the toucans, and all frugivorous
creation.

Of all fruits the durian is the most delicious. Such is the universal
opinion of men, including A. R. Wallace, who have had the opportunity of
becoming familiar with it. It is purely tropical, grows on a lofty tree,
is round and nearly as large as a cocoanut. A thick and tough rind
protects the delicacy contained within. When opened five cells are
revealed, satiny white, containing masses of cream-coloured pulp. This
pulp is the edible portion and has an indescribable flavour and
consistence. You can safely eat all you want of it, and the more you eat
the more you will want. To eat durian, as Mr Wallace says, is alone
worth a voyage to the East. But it has one strange quality--it smells so
badly as to be at first almost nauseating; some people even can never
bring themselves to touch it. Once this repulsion is mastered the fruit
will probably be preferred to all other foods. The natives give it
honourable titles, exalt it, and even wax poetical over it.

Of course we all know the multitudinous uses of the bamboo. This grass
is one of the most wonderful, beautiful and useful of Nature's gifts to
uncivilized man. And yet one more use has been found for it. In the East
a new industry has sprung up, viz., the making of "Panama" hats of
bamboo strips or threads. In texture and pliability these hats are said
to even surpass the genuine "Panamas," are absolutely impervious to
rain, and can be produced at a much lower cost.

The Looshais killed pigs, and even tigers, by ingeniously setting
poisoned arrows in the woods, which were released by the animals
pressing on a string. One of my coolies was unfortunate enough to be
shot and killed in this way.

Growing on decayed tree stumps I frequently found a saprophyte
(_hymenophallus_), much larger than its English representative, indeed a
monster in comparison, and possessing a vile and most odious smell, yet
attractive to certain depraved insects.

I made a very fine collection of butterflies, moths and beetles, which,
however, was entirely destroyed by worms or ants during its passage to
England. The magnificent Atlas moth was common in Sylhet and Cachar.
What an extraordinarily beautiful creature it is, sometimes so large as
to cover a dinner-plate. I never was privileged to see it fly. It seemed
to be always in a languid or torpid condition.

Thunderstorms occur almost daily during the wet season. By lightning I
lost several people. In one case, whilst standing watching a man remove
seedlings from a nursery bed, standing indeed immediately behind and
close to him, there came a thrilling flash of lightning. It shook myself
as well as several women who stood by. The man in front of me, who had
been sitting on his haunches with a steel-ribbed umbrella over him,
remained silent and still. At last I called on him to continue his work
and pulled back the umbrella to see his face. He was stone dead.
Examination showed a small blackish spot where the steel rib had rested
and conveyed the fatal shock.

The approach of the daily rainstorm, usually about noon, was a
remarkable sight. Immense fan-shaped, thunderous-looking clouds would
come rolling up, billow upon billow, travelling at great speed and
accompanied by terrific wind. A flash of lightning and a crashing peal
of thunder and the deluge began, literally a deluge. The rainfall
averaged about 180 inches in seven months. At Cherrapunji, in the Kassia
Hills, within sight of my place and only about twenty miles distant, the
rainfall was and is the greatest in the world, no other district
approaching it in this respect, viz., averaging per annum 450 inches;
greatest recorded over 900 inches; and there is a record of _one_ month,
July, of a fall of nearly 400 inches; yet all this precipitation takes
place during the six or seven wet months, the rest of the year being
absolutely dry and rainless. These measurements are recorded at the
Government Observatory Station and need not be disputed. It may readily