Country people cure their leaves in earthen kettles[34], which answer every necessary purpose at less trouble and expence, whereby they are enabled to sell them cheaper. To complete the preparation, after the Tea has been kept for some months, it must be taken out of the vessels, in which it had been contained, and dried again over a very gentle fire, that it may be deprived of any humidity which remained, or might since have been contracted. The common Tea is kept in earthen pots with narrow mouths; but the best sort of Tea used by the Emperor and nobility is put in porcellane or China vessels. The Bantsjaa, or coarsest Tea, is kept by the country people in straw baskets, made in the shape of barrels, which they place under the roofs of their houses, near the hole that lets out the smoke, and imagine that this situation does not injure the Tea. This is the relation we have from Kæmpfer of the method in which the Japanese collected and cured their Tea. In the accounts of China, authors have in general treated very slightly of the cultivation and preparation of Tea. Le Compte[35] indeed observes, that to have good Tea, the leaves should be gathered while they are small, tender, and juicy. They begin commonly to gather them in the months of March and April, according as the season is forward; they afterwards expose them to the steam of boiling water to soften them; and, as soon as they are penetrated by it, they draw them over copper plates[36] kept on the fire, which dries them by degrees, till they grow brown, and roll up of themselves in that manner we see them. However, it is certain, from the Chinese drawings, which exhibit a faithful picture, though rudely executed, of the whole process from beginning to end, that the Tea tree grows for the most part in hilly countries, on their rocky summits, and steep declivities; and it would seem by the pains the Chinese are at, in making paths, and fixing a kind of scaffolds, to assist them, that these places afford the finest Tea. It appears from these drawings, that the trees in general are not much taller than man’s height: The gatherers of the leaves are never represented but on the ground; they make use of hooked sticks indeed, but these seem rather intended to draw the branches towards them, when they hang over brooks, rivers, or from places difficult of access, than to bend down the tops or upper branches of the trees on plain ground. They pick the leaves as soon as gathered into different sorts, and cure them nearly in the manner described to be practised by the Japanese. They build a range of stoves, like those in a chemist’s laboratory, or great kitchen, where the men work, and curl the leaves in the pans themselves. It seems also that they repeat the drying. They dry it likewise, after having spread it abroad in shallow baskets, in the sun; and, by the means of sieves, separate the larger from the smaller leaves, and these again from the dust.