He does this by weighing a tiny quantity of each class or grade of tea into separate cups, pouring boiling water on them, and then tasting the liquor by sipping a little into the mouth, not to be swallowed, but ejected again.
[Illustration: PLUCKING TEA LEAF.] All this will give an idea of the variety of duties of a tea-planter.

He has no time for shooting, polo, or visiting during the busy season.

But at mid-winter the great annual Mela takes place at the station, the local seat of Government.

The Mela lasts a couple of weeks, and it is a season of fun and jollity with both planters and natives.

There were two or three social clubs in Silchar; horse and pony racing, polo, cricket and football filled the day, dinner and sociability the night; and what nights! The amount of liquor consumed at these meetings was almost incredible.
Nothing can look more beautiful or more gratifying to the eye of the owner than a tract of tea, pruned level as a table and topped with new fresh young leaf-shoots, four to eight inches high, in full flush, ready for the pluckers' nimble fingers.
At the end of one year I was offered and accepted the position of assistant at a Sylhet garden, called Kessoregool, the property consisting of three distinct gardens, the principal one being directly overseered by the manager, an American.