“The interior is very much like a rick-yard, with tobacco stalks instead of hay-ricks, among which a perfect army of half-clad Chinese coolies, 400 strong, are hard at work sorting, ranging and stowing. So overpoweringly strong is the scent of the half-dried tobacco leaves that a smoker would have nothing to do but to take in an empty pipe with him and enjoy a good hard smoke gratis, merely by inhaling the air through it. But the Chinamen, whether habituated to it by long use, or fortified against it by the superior power of opium, breathe this perfumed atmosphere as easily as if it were the purest air of the sea. ‘That is how we measure the heat, you see,’ says our host, calling our attention to the hollow bamboos thrust through the heart of each stack, with a stick inside it, which, when pulled out, is almost too hot to touch. ‘It must never be above or below a certain point, you know. Instead of stripping off the leaves at once, we hang up the whole plant to dry, and do not strip it till it is quite dried. The Sumatra tobacco, however, will not do for cigars. It is only used for what we call the ‘deckblatt’ (cover leaf), which covers the outside of the cigar.’” Consul Kennedy reports that “the main cause of the prosperity in Deli is the tobacco, the first crop of which was shipped in 1869. “The crop for 1884 will turn out about 122,000 bales, valued at 2,080,000_l._ “The accompanying table shows the export during the last 11 years:— Year. Bales. Value. ────────────────────────── £ 1873 9,238 208,333 1874 12,811 250,000 1875 15,147 291,666 1876 28,947 520,833 1877 36,167 541,666 1878 48,155 750,000 1879 57,544 875,000 1880 64,965 937,500 1881 82,356 1,187,500 1882 102,032 1,750,000 1883 92,000 1,583,333 [Estimated.] ────────────────────────── NOTE.—One bale equals 176 English lb.