378          VOYAGE DOWN THE AMOOI.
they have any taste, liking, or partiality to the Chinese leaf, have remarked the richness and flavor of the better sort of teas found in Russia. And here it will be as well to remark, that in western and southern Russia it is not always "caravan tea " that the voyager will find upon the road, as, par excellence, the Kyachta tea is called; but the greater probability is that he will be served with the very poorest, meanest, and dirtiest black tea, via London, that has found its stealthy way over the Prussian or Polish borders.
In the first place, it will be well to state that all the tea lawfully entering Russia must come overland from China via Pekin and Kyachta, with the exception of one cargo of seven hundred chests imported by sea yearly by " The Imperial American Company of Russia," under a special and exclusive grant in their charter.
The argument in favor of the superiority of " caravan tea " over other tea in Europe, is, that the sea voyage, with its salt atmosphere, the heat and dampness consequent upon a double passage through the tropics and across the equator, the alternation of heat and cold, the sweating, dampness, and confined air, all tend to exhaust and deteriorate from the delicacy of flavor, and add perhaps to it something of the flavor of bilge water and the double sweatbath it has gone through. And again, the sea-going tea has grown to such an enormous bulk that less pains are taken in its selection, preparation and quality from year to year, besides which adulteration has stepped in to increase the bulk of the poorer qualities of the leaf.
Again, climate, soil, and air, as we know, in many