so well, naturally induced
the authorities of the province to try this cultivation upon a more
extensive scale. It appears that in 1844, about 4,000 young plants
were obtained from the Government plantations, and planted on a
tract of excellent land, which the natives wished to abandon.
Instead of allowing the people to throw up their land, they were
promised it rent-free upon the condition that they attended to the
cultivation of the tea, which had been planted on a small portion of
the ground attached to the village.

This arrangement seems to have failed either from want of knowledge,
or from design, or perhaps partly from both of these causes. More
lately, a larger number of plants have been planted, but I regret to
say with nearly the same results.

But results of this discouraging kind are what any one, acquainted
with the nature of the tea plant, could have easily foretold, had
the treatment, intended to be given it, been explained to him. Upon
enquiry, I found the villagers had been managing the tea lands just
as they had been doing their rice fields, that is, a regular system
of irrigation was practised. As water was plentiful, a great number,
indeed nearly all, the plants seem to have perished from this cause.
The last planting alluded to had been done late in the spring, and
just at the commencement of the dry weather, and to these plants
little or no water seems to have been given; so that, in fact, it
was going from one extreme to another equally bad, and the result
was of course nearly the same.

I have no hesitation in saying that the district in question is well
adapted for the cultivation of tea. With judicious management, a
most productive farm might be established here in four or five
years. Land is plentiful, and of little value either to the natives
or to the Government.

2_nd, at Kutoor_.--This is the name of a large district 30 or 40
miles northward from Almorah, in the centre of which the old town or
village of Byznath stands. It is a fine undulating country,
consisting of wide valleys, gentle slopes, and little hills, while
the whole is intersected by numerous streams, and surrounded by high
mountains. The soil of this extensive district is most fertile, and
is capable of producing large crops of rice, on the low irrigable
lands, and the dry gra