The Valley Virginian. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1865-1895, 1891-12-03
WHO DISCOVERED TEAq
Philadelphia Times.

! Philadelphia Times.
By whom and when the use of tea fe
drinking purposes was discovered is los
:. in antiquity. The famous herb is spoil
: en- of in the Chinese annals as far bac
: as 1900 B. c., at which time it was Gu
: tivated and classified almost as con
pletely as to-day.
One ancient legend says that it's vii
tues were learned by accident by Chi
nese monarch, King Shen Nung, 9Th
Divine Husbandman," who fourishe,
forty centuries ago, and who, in boilin,
water over a fire made from the tie,
branches on which the leaves still hung
allowed some of the latter to fall int,
the pot. During the reign of King Sher
Nung She (s,737 to 1896 B. CO. he no
only discovered the curative virtues O
plants, but also first fashioned timber
into plows and taught the people the
art of husbandry and instituted the
practice of holding markets for the ex
change of commodities.
Tea was highly esteemed in nearly
every ancient Asiatic city near the sea
and was used as royal gift from the
Chinese monarchs and great merchants
to the potentates of the East To the
rajahs of Handy, the sultans of Ceylon,
the shoguns and daimois of Japan cares
fully selected samples of the leaves,
with great regularity. Some must have
been presents worthy of crown. One
of them is thus recorded "It weighed
40 catties (about so pounds,) and each
leaf was perfect in color, size and age.
The leaves were divided into parcels of
five maces each Ia little over half an
ounce, and each parcel was wrapped in
pure tin foil. This was wrapped in turn
in thin white paper and put into little
bag of bright colored silk. A hundred
bags were placed into a porcelain jar,
whose lid was securely fastened and
sealed, and each jar was protected by a
box of camphor wood, trimmed with
silver hinges and ornaments.
In the list of princes to whom these
| presents were made are many whose
| identity would be otherwise lost to his
tory. From the old writings many Gu
rious facts are thus obtained. Among
other things it would seem that Corea,
to-day more dead than alive, was at one
time formidable power, military and
naval; that the japanese at long inter
walls changed from peaceable neighbors
.r,% H. IL
of Sir Walter Raleigh, Frobisher and
Drake; that Manipur, Assam, Burmah,
and Tong Kwin at various epochs were
strong belligerent communities in the
far East that Cambodia and Cochin
China were populous, rich and warlike
civilizations, where now the tiger prowls
and the serpent glides; that the island
of Ceylon was the scene of brilliant and
brave dynasties, which followed one
another like the waves on the shore, and
at times the Tartar nomads who live to
the north, northeast and west of Asia,
were gathered into great armies and
nations by unknown Tamerlanes and
Zenghis Khanns.
The presents of tea from the Flowery
Kingdom to kingly neighbors are hum
BILE monuments to the crash of dynasties
and empires. Before the time of Con-
fucius it had supplanted every other
fluid for assuaging thirst. Its sanitary
excellence was appreciated by Shen
Kung, a celebrated scholar and philoso-
pher, who said Tea is better than
vino for If loo 10th not 70
neither does it cause man to do foolish
things and repent thereof in his sober
moments. 1t is better than water, for
it doth not carry disease, neither doth
it act as a poison as doth water when
the wells contain foul or rotten matter"
That it's use was universal is borne
out by one of the maxims of Confucius,
the wisest man of China, when he said:
''Be good and courteous to all, even to
stranger from other lands If he say
unto thee that he thirsteth give unto
him cup of warm tea without money
and without price,
At the time of Buddha China was en-
ioying large foreign commerce, in tea
1t was carried by her junks to Japan,
Corea, Tonquin, Anam, Cochin, Bur
NAH, Siam, India, Ceylon, Persia and
Arabia. According to one record it was
sent to great fiat river country west of
Arabia, from which it was separated by
a long and very torrid sea, which must
have been Egypt. 1t was carried by
caravans to Manchuria, Mongolia, Kuld-
ia Tartary, Thibet, Persia and northern
India
This commerce fourished during CEN
turtles and eliminated in the dynasties
of Hung Tung and Tung Chi about 1900
A. D.
From this time there was a slow but
steady decline to the reign of the pres
ent sovereign Kwang Hsu. In the past
twenty years the decline has been some
thing terrible, the trade to-day being
scarcely one-quarter of what it was in
1870. The outlook is not promising to
the tea planter and patriot in any re-
spect. In every district the industry is
on the verge of bankruptcy. The de-
mand from abroad yearly diminishes, the
people themselves are taking to other
beverages, while the taxation necessary
to government, which in the former
years of prosperity was a mere trifle,
now threatens utter extinction of the
trade.
There are many interesting facts to be
| CLEANED from the old books in relation
to tea trade. There is no doubt, for ex-
ample, that China was far more liberal
in her commercial policy when ruled by
her own people than she was after the
Manchu conquest in A. D. 1911. Before
that time are many illusions to trades
and merchants from various countries
and to the expectation of goods of all
sorts. find reference to bronze works
and porcelains from Japan, weapons and
pottery from Corea, cloths and other wo
ven tissues from Indo- Chinese territories
and ivory and tortoise shell from Ceylon
and Arabia. The transactions were upon
a large scale and required quite Navy