File:An authentic account of an embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China - including cursory observations made, and information obtained in travelling through that ancient empire, and (14586735940).jpg

Identifier: authenticaccount02stau (find matches)
Title: An authentic account of an embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China : including cursory observations made, and information obtained in travelling through that ancient empire, and a small part of Chinese Tartary ; together with a relation of the voyage undertaken on the occasion of His Majesty's ship the Lion, and the ship Hindostan, in the East India company's service, to the Yellow Sea and Gulf of Pekin, as well as of their return to Europe ; taken chiefly from the papers of His Excellency the Earl of Macartney, Sir Erasmus Gower, and of other gentlemen in the several departments of the embassy
Year: 1797 (1790s)
Authors: Staunton, George, Sir, 1737-1801 Macartney, George Macartney, Earl, 1737-1806 Gower, Erasmus, Sir, 1742-1814
Subjects: Voyages and travels
Publisher: London : G. Nicol
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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use throughout the empire. The warm infusion of anyaromatic herb is, no doubt, likely to be grateful to per-sons exhausted by fatigue, frequently occasioning a vio-lent perspiration ; as well as to stomachs labouring withindigestion. One of the best qualities, perhaps, of it isthat the taste for it and the habit of drinking it, at alltimes lessens the relish for fermented and inebriatingliquors. The poor infuse the same leaves several timesover. This plant is cultivated in several of the provincesof China, but seldom more northerly than thirty degreesbeyond the Equator. It thrives best between that paralleland the line that separates the temperate from the torridzone ; tho it is to be found also in the Chinese provinceof Yunnan, to the southward of it. Several specimensof the tea plant, and of others chiefly cultivated in China,were procured by the Embassador and sent to Bengal,in some parts of which his Excellency had been inform^ed, were districts adapted for their cultivation. Such
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( u/////Y//^/ ^r.uf/// (///////// EMBASSY TO CHINA. 167 Immense quantities of tea are raised in China, that a joameytosudden failure of a demand from Europe, would not be - likely to occasion any material diminution of its priceat the Chinese markets; tho it might be attended withinconvenience to the particular cultivators who are inthe habit now of supplying the Canton merchants withthat article for exportation. A plant very like the tea flourished, at this time, onthe sides and the very tops of mountains, where the soilconsisted of little more than fragments of stone, crumbledinto a sort of coarse earth by the joint action of the sunand rain. The Chinese call this plant cha-whaw, orflower of tea, on account of the resemblance of one tothe other; and because its petals, as well as the entireflowers of the Arabian jessamine are sometimes mixedamong the teas, in order to increase their fragrance. Thisplant, the cha-whaw, is the camellia sesanqua of the bo-tanists, and yields a nut, Iro

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