The Daily Cincinnati Republican, And Commercial Register

CINCINNATI:
MONDAY, JANUARY 19, 1835.

TEA.

From the following passage in an article in the last number of the London Quarterly Review, it appears that the "down east" does not contain all the Yankees of the world. Their very antipodes it seems have been detected in the manufactory of an article of a similar character to the "horn gun flints," "wooden nutmegs" of our own Hemisphere. It may be well for our merchants in the future to keep an eye to this matter, in the selection of their teas.

"The evil consequence which we predicted in an article on The Free Trade to China' (Quarterly Review, No. C.) have already began to show themselves. The most respectable of the Hong merchants have retired from business, and the rest are either unable or unwilling to advance a shilling to enable the poor cultivators of tea to prepare the usual supply, though 40,000 tons of shipping were expected at Canton: but we shall, notwithstanding, have some tea, and it is as well that our readers should know what sort of tea it will be. Our informant is from an eye witness of unquestionable authority, recently arrived in England from China.

On the opposite side of the river to, and a short distance from, Canton, is a manufactory for converting the very worst kind of coarse black tea into green. It is well known in Canton by the name of Wo-ping and was always rejected by the agents of the East India Company.

The plan is to stir it about on iron plate moderately heated, mixing it up with a composition of turmeric, indigo and white lead by which process it acquires that blooming blue of plums and that crispy appearance which are supposed to indicate the fine green teas.

Our informant says, there can be no mistake respecting the white lead, as the Chinese superintendent called it by its common name yuen-fun.

At the same time it is right to state, that pulverized gypsum (known by the name of shet-kno) is understood by the gentleman of the late factory to be employed to subdue a too intense blue color given by the indigo. There were already prepared, when this visit took place, 50,000 chests of this precious article, just enough for three cargoes of the largest ships of the East India Company.

The crafty proprietors told our friend and the other visitors that this tea was not for the English but the American market; but we shall no doubt have our full share of it; nay, some particulars lately published in the newspapers render it highly probable that the importation of the well-doctored Wo-ping has already commenced."