Each foreign house employs an inspector or taster, whose business it is to examine samples of all the teas submitted to the firm for purchase.  When a taster has a lot of teas to examine, several samples, selected from various chests, being placed before him, he first of all takes up a large handful and smells it repeatedly, then chews some of it, and records his opinion in a huge folio, wherein are chronicled the merits of every lot examined by him; and lastly, he puts small portions of the various kinds into a great many little cups into which boiling water is poured, and when the tea is drawn he takes a sip of the infusion.  With all due deference to his art, sometimes, when the taster does not know exactly what to say of a sample, the book will bear witness that the parcel has “a decided tea flavor.”  But the accuracy of good tasters is really wonderful; they will classify and fix the true value of a chop of teas beyond dispute, and the East India Company’s tasters were occasionally of eminent service in detecting frauds.  A first-rate tea-taster may make a fortune in a few years; but, from constantly inhaling minute particles of the herb, the health is frequently ruined.

The teas which come to Canton are brought chiefly by water.  Only occasional land stages are used in transportation, the principal one being the pass which crosses the Ineiling Mountain, in the north of the Canton or Quang-tong Province, cut through at the beginning of the eighth century.  As every article of merchandise which goes through the pass, either from the south or the north, is carried across on the backs of men, several hundred thousand porters are here employed.  Many tortuous paths are cut over the mountain, and through them are continually passing these poor creatures, condemned by poverty to terrible fatigue, the work being so laborious that the generality of them live but a short time.  At certain intervals are little bamboo sheds, where travellers rest on their journey, smoking a pipe and drinking tea for refreshment; while at the summit of the pass is an immense portal, or kind of triumphal arch, erected on the boundary line of the two Provinces of Quang-tong and Kiang-si.  The teas, securely packed in chests wrapped in matting, are placed in the boats which ply upon the rivers flowing from the tea countries into the Poyang Lake, and after successive changes are at length brought to the foot of the Ineiling Mountain, carried over it on the backs of men, and reshipped on the south side of the pass.  The boats in which the tea is brought to Canton convey from five hundred to eight hundred chests each, and are called chopboats by foreigners, from each lot of teas being called a chop.  They serve admirably for inland navigation, drawing but little water, and are so rounded as to make it almost impossible to overset one.  A ledge is built upon each side of the boat for the trackers, who, when the wind fails, collect in the bow, and, sticking long bamboo poles into the bed of the stream, walk along the ledge to the stern, thus propelling the barge, and repeating the operation as often as they have traversed the length of the planks.  A number of excise posts and custom-houses are established along the route from the tea regions to Canton, for the purpose of levying duties on the teas, none being allowed to be sent to that city by coastwise voyages.