. The best of land may be purchased at ten
rupees per acre, and an average-sized plantation embraces about two
hundred acres. The prospective garden must be cleared of its forest and
jungle, which is an arduous task, but when once it is in order one
native can properly cultivate an acre. The best teas are raised upon the
tops of the hills, upward of seven thousand feet above the sea-level.
Good tea can only be grown under two conditions: these are moisture and
heat, and hence the southern slopes of the Himalayas are admirably
adapted to its cultivation, for during the middle of the day the sun is
warm, and at night there are very copious dews. The laborers employed
are all natives, and one or two Europeans only are necessary to
superintend the largest plantation. The indigenous tea-plant was first
discovered in Assam (the north-eastern district of Bengal) in the year
1830. From there it was introduced into Cachar and Darjeeling, and from
these places into the hills in the north-western part of Hindostan. In
1850 the English government founded plantations in the Kangra Valley,
about one hundred and twenty miles from Lahore, on the borders of
Cashmere, which proved so successful that many were soon established in
various other localities. Cinchona (_Cinchona calisaya_) also succeeds
well upon the hills, and is being extensively grown, as, owing to the
prevalence of fevers of all kinds, quinine is in great demand throughout
India.

Reaching the Ganges again without accident or noteworthy event, I
traveled on westward up its rich valley, and soon entered upon the great
plain of Hindostan (embracing an area of half a million square miles),
which, though nearly treeless, contains some of the most fertile soil on
the globe. There were clusters of huts and dilapidated mosques at short
intervals, and the natives might be seen at work in the fields with
their antiquated wooden ploughs, the bent limbs of trees, or engaged in
cutting _paddy_ (rice in the husk), or hoeing poppy-plants, or digging
little drains. Wherever we met them they would stop work, drop
everything, and gaze at the railway train, which seemed to them
apparently as strange a sight as if it had just dropped down from the
clouds.

In Hindostan, land is owned either by government or by the native rajahs
and nawabs. That belonging to the former is leased to a class of people
called _zemindars_ (the word means "landholder," "landkeeper"), and they
sublet it to anoth