The tea-plant is a shrub requiring very little care. A siliceous soil suits it best, and in it it attains its fullest development. Great quantities of seed are sown in September and October, and when the plants are about nine inches high they are transplanted and placed about twenty inches apart. When the leaves have reached their fullest development they are gathered, carefully washed to remove any earth which may have clung to them, and they are then exposed to the rays of the sun, the day chosen for this part of the preparation being the very hottest in the year. In the evening the dry leaves are taken up with every precaution against injury, placed in boxes, and protected from the air by sheets of lead. Millions of cases of tea thus packed are dispersed all over the world, but it is needless to add that the Chinese keep the best leaves for their own consumption. Green, or as they themselves call it, white tea, is put into boxes directly it is picked, without any drying or other preparation, and black tea is produced by placing the leaves in a brazier over a slow fire, these leaves being constantly turned over with the hands by the men in charge of them, to prevent them from sticking together or drying too quickly. When taken from the brazier they are placed in a sieve and still further manipulated, always with the greatest care and delicacy. Lastly, they are once more exposed to heat in the brazier to give them the brown colour so much esteemed by many consumers. It is in this last stage of the preparation that the skill of the manipulator is put to the severest test, for if the tea is too much burnt it will have no taste at all, and if it is not sufficiently burnt it will be bitter and heating. I forget now in whose house it was, but I was on one occasion stupid enough, when the guest of a mandarin, to say I had once at the residence of a clergyman drunk an excellent cup of tea mixed with rum and sweetened with sugar. "Sugar and rum!" cried my host, who was terribly shocked. "We must take care not to offer our best teas to you, for you would certainly not be able to appreciate them." [Illustration: FIG. 21.--A VILLA NEAR CANTON.] [Sidenote: THE FATIM GARDEN] I stopped eight days at Canton; more than enough to visit everything worth seeing in that now uninteresting city. I saw the endless rice-fields stretching away beyond its gates; I went to look at the French concession, where there is not a single French inhabitant, though the names of the streets, such as the _Rue de la Fusée_, the _Rue de la Dordogne_, and the _Rue de la Charente_, recall the vessels once manned by the brave sailors who had for a brief time sojourned in this remote Chinese town. One curiosity which every visitor to Canton ought to see, is the so-called Fatim garden, where each tree represents some fantastic animal, and in which prowl herds of pigs, more quaint in appearance than the shrubs tended by pale-faced young bonzes wearing yellow garments.