Breakfast over, we jumped ashore again, and, desiring to conduct our sight-seeing systematically, started for the fields. First we walked to the foot of a hill a little distance off, where some men in short cotton trousers and jackets were laying out a new plantation. The ground was accurately marked off, and in one place the little plants, only an inch or two in height, were just showing above the ground. In another, the seeds--little round balls they looked like--were being planted in the rows. Passing another field, where some men were at work with their hoes in true Chinese style, stopping every few moments to smoke their pipes, we came at last to where the plants had attained some size and the actual picking was going on. The plants themselves were from two to six feet high, according to age, and from repeated cuttings down had grown into dense masses of small twigs. Many of them were covered with little white flowers, somewhat similar to the jasmine, and seeds inclosed in a casing not unlike that of the hazel-nut, but thinner and full of oil. Charley thought they looked like little laurel bushes; to me, those that had been well picked were not unlike huckleberry bushes, only the leaves were, of course, a much darker green. The first picking, usually in April, is when the leaves are very young and tender, commanding a much higher price than those subsequently plucked. The second is a month later, when they have attained maturity; and as unpropitious weather would be likely to ruin them, great expedition is used in getting in the crop, the entire population turning out to assist. A third, and even a fourth, follows; but the quality rapidly deteriorates, and but a small proportion of these last pickings is prepared for export. [Illustration: DRYING THE TEA.]