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descriptions of it paint a vivid picture in inland China, of towns, villages, farming and husbandry at the end of the eighteenth century and put life to the many pictures and engravings of that period.
It was on this inland journey that Macartney was able to collect his tea plants. He says in his own words:
I must not omit that the Viceroy (they had been joined by the Viceroy from Canton) observing our curiosity about everything relative to natural history, allowed us to collect seeds and fossils as we came along, and to take up several tea plants in a growing state with large balls of earth adhering to them, which tea plants I flatter myself I shall be able to transmit to Bengal, where I have no doubt that by the spirit of patriotism of its Government an effective cultivation of this valuable shrub will be undertaken and pursued with success.
No doubt the hard balls of earth were wrapped in the same casings of matting in which plants arrive from China to this day.
So far as opium is concerned, rather oddly, I cannot find that it came up in conversation at all although by then the illicit trade was well established and its use had been banned by Imperial edict some sixty years before.
Dr. Dinwiddie, who had accompanied the Embassy to Peking, took the plants to India on Jackall, together with tallow and varnish plants as well as some silkworm eggs, all of which were delivered to Dr. Roxburgh, superintendent of the East India Company's botanical gardens in Calcutta. Some years later indigenous tea plants were discovered growing in Assam and it is tea from these which seems more like the tea that we are now accustomed to drink. Whether there was any hybridisation between the two species I cannot say. Certainly Chinese tea retains its distinctive characteristics.
The journal of the Embassy's adventures in China is a fascinating and extraordinarily detailed account and description of a way of life and scenery which has largely disappeared. Present day Chengde is a shadow of the Jehol described by Macartney with pagodas, temples
371
descriptions of it paint a vivid picture in inland China, of towns, villages, farming and husbandry at the end of the eighteenth century and put life to the many pictures and engravings of that period.
It was on this inland journey that Macartney was able collect his tea plants. He says in his own words:
I must not omit that the Viceroy (they had been joined by the Viceroy from Canton) observing our curiosity about everything relative to natural history, allowed us to collect seeds and fossils as we came along, and to take up several tea plants in a growing state with large balls of earth adhering to them, which tea plants I flatter myself I shall be able to transmit to Bengal, where I have no doubt that by the spirit of patriotism of its Government an effective cultivation of this valuable shrub will be undertaken and pursued with success.
No doubt the hard balls of earth were wrapped in the same casings of matting in which plants arrive from China to this day.
So far as opium is concerned, rather oddly, I cannot find that it came up in conversation at all although by then the illicit trade was well established and its use had been banned by Imperial edict some sixty years before.
Dr. Dinwiddie, who had accompanied the Embassy to ‘Pekin, took the plants to India on Jackall, together with tallow and varnish plants as well as some silkworm eggs, all of which were delivered to Dr. Roxburgh, superintendent of the East India Company's botanical gardens in Calcutta. Some years later indigenous tea plants were discovered growing in Assam and it is tea from these which seems more like the tea that we are now accustomed to drink. Whether there was any hybridisation between the two species I cannot say. Certainly Chinese tea retains its distinctive characteristics.
The journal of the Embassy's adventures in China is a fascinating and extraordinarily detailed account and description of a way of life and scenery which has largely disappeared. Present day Chengde is a shadow of the Jehol described by McCartney with pagodas, temples
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