One of the most remarkable and interesting facts in the history of commerce is the comparatively recent origin of the tea trade. The leaves of the tea-plant were extensively used by the people of China and Japan centuries before it was known to Western nations. This is the more singular from the fact that the silks of China found their way to the West at a very early period,--as early, at least, as the first century of the Christian era,--while the use of tea in Europe dates back only about two hundred years. The earliest notices of its use in the countries where it is indigenous are found in the writings of the Moorish historians and travellers, about the end of the eighth century, at which time the Mahometans were freely allowed to visit China, and travel through the empire as they pleased. Soliman, an Arabian merchant, who visited China about A.D. 850, describes it under the name of _Sah_, as being the favorite beverage of the people; and Ibn Batuta, A.D. 1323, speaks of it as used for correcting the bad properties of water, and as a medicine. Mandelslo, a German, who travelled in India, 1638-40, in describing the customs of the European merchants at Surat, speaks of tea as of something unfamiliar. The reasons he gives for drinking both it and coffee are charmingly incongruous, as is generally the case when men undertake to find some solemn excuse for doing what they like. "At our ordinary meetings every day we took only _Thé_, which is commonly used all over the Indies, not only among those of the Country, but among the _Dutch_ and _English_, who take it as a Drug that cleanses the stomach and digests the superfluous humours, by a temperate heat particular thereto. The Persians, instead of _Thé_, drink their _Kahwa_, which cools and abates the natural heat which _Thé_ preserves."[A] Of its first introduction into Europe little is known. In 1517, King Emanuel of Portugal sent a fleet of eight ships to China, and an embassy to Peking; but it was not until after the formation of the Dutch East India Company, in 1602, that the use of tea became known on the Continent, and even then, although the Hollanders paid much attention to it, it made its way slowly for many years. The first notice of it in England is found in Pepys's "Diary," under date of September 25th, 1660,--as before quoted. In 1664, the East India Company presented to the king, among other "raretyes," 2 lb. 2 oz. of "thea"; and in 1667, they desire their agent at Bantam to send "100 lb. waight of the best tey that he can gett."[B] From this insignificant beginning the importation has grown from year to year, until ninety million pounds went to Great Britain in 1856, forty million coming to the United States the same year. [Footnote A: Mandelslo's _Voyages and Travels into the East Indies_, p. 18, ed. 1662.] [Footnote B: Grant's _History of the East India Company_. London, 1813, p. 76.]