INDIA

Colonist, Volume II, Issue 174, 21 June 1859, Page 4

INDIA

One consequence of the mutiny in India; and the change of government that has ensued, isthat^ public attention has been more forcibly drawn to the agricultural resources of the country, and its capability of supplying those articles which are in demand in Europe. And English capital will be found in abundance in order to develop these resources, when the remunerative value of the occupation can be fairly established. Cotton has been the article which has most enlisted attention, because it is the article which is the most closely connected with the manufacturing industry of Great Britain. But thereare other products obtainable from the soil of equal if not greater value. Amongst these _ tea holds a high place—the tea plant is indigenous to'lndia, though its cultivation had •never become naturalised there as it has done, in China. This is not owing to any inferiority-of quality, for the Indian plant is said to be quite equal in flavour to the •Chinese, and in some respects superior. .Several years ago an attempt was made to commence tea cultivation in India as a commercial speculation, and the Assam Tea Company, after struggling.through the usual preliminary : difficulties which new projects always encounter, established itself successfully, and Indian tea is now a regular article of export, though still on comparatively a small scale. But the cultivation is found to be highly profitable, though it is specially adapted for capitalists, as the returns do not come in for some years. Wehavebefbreusaprospectusofanewjteagrowing company in the district of Cachar, in Bengal, which gives a detailed estimate of the cost of working a plantation, and the proceeds. The proposal is to rent ten thousand acres for ninety-nine years, and bring it gradually under cultivation at the rate of three hundred acres a-year. The tea plant yields no produce for the first three years, so that during that period the speculation is all outlay and no return. Nor does the plant yield fully even then, for its produce at that period is only at the rate of half a maund per acre. But the produce increases annually at the rate of half a maund per acre, until the tenth year, when the yield is four maunds per acre. This is estimated'to be about the average maximum yield, but lands well planted will yield one-fourth more, or five maunds to the acre. A maund contains ■eighty poundsweight, and is generally estimated to be worth, eighty rupees. The outlay required is r for clearing, planting, purchasing seed, weeding, erecting the necessary buildings, providing live •stock and implements, manipulating the tea', paying salaries and wages, and purchasing boxes- lined with lead for packing the tea in. These expenses being avoidable, press heavily at first, While there are no returns,.or while the returns/are small, and it is not till after the expiration of the sixth year that the balance appears on the right side of the ledger. But after that period the profits mount up with great rapidity, and abundantly repay the patience that had been exercised. The calculation that at the expiration of fifteen years; ;the aggregate net profits will equal the; orjginaf capital, there being at that ,time: only four thousand five hundred acres of the testate under crop, leaving thus more than half of it still to bring into profitable : cultivation, and with eighty-four years of the!lease to rum* "We have no means of verifying the correctness of these calculations. The prospectus we have drawn them from is published, not in London, but in Calcutta, where inac-. curacies, if any, can be easily exposed. But if the estimate of profits at all approximates to the truth it is clear that the cultivation of tea in India offers a very profitable field for the employment of English capital, if satisfactory management of the plantations can be secured. The extension of this branch of tropical agriculture will be as beneficial to the world at large as to India, for the tea-drinking population is rapidly on the increase, both in Europe, in America,, and in Australia, and the annual rate:of consumption augments as rapidly. Hitherto China has been almost the sole source of supply, but if India can step in to break up the monopoly, it will be the happy medium, both in making Britain less exclusively dependent on China for tea, and less exclusively dependent on America for cotton. — '■" /Sydney Herald, June 10.