the district in question is well adapted for the cultivation of tea.  With judicious management, a most productive farm might be established here in four or five years.  Land is plentiful, and of little value either to the natives or to the Government.

2_nd, at Kutoor_.—­This is the name of a large district 30 or 40 miles northward from Almorah, in the centre of which the old town or village of Byznath stands.  It is a fine undulating country, consisting of wide valleys, gentle slopes, and little hills, while the whole is intersected by numerous streams, and surrounded by high mountains.  The soil of this extensive district is most fertile, and is capable of producing large crops of rice, on the low irrigable lands, and the dry grains and tea on the sides of the hills.  From some cause, however, either the thinness of population or the want of a remunerative crop,[15] large tracts of this fertile district have been allowed to go out of cultivation.  Everywhere I observed ruinous and jungle-covered terraces, which told of the more extended cultivation of former years.

Amongst some hills near the upper portion of this district, two small tea plantations have been formed under the patronage and superintendence of Captain Ramsey, Senior Assistant Commissioner of Kumaon.  Each of them cover three or four acres of land, and had been planted about a year before the time of my visit.  In this short space of time the plants had grown into nice strong bushes, and were in the highest state of health.  I never saw, even in the most favoured districts in China, any plantations looking better than these.  This result, Captain Ramsay informed me, had been attained in the following simple manner:—­All the land attached to the two villages with which the tea farms are connected, is exempted from the revenue tax, a sum amounting only to 525 Rs. per annum.  In lieu of this, the assamees (cultivators) of both villages assist with manure, and at the transplanting season, as well as ploughing and preparing fresh land.  In addition to this, one chowdree and four prisoners are constantly employed upon the plantations.  The chief reason of the success of these plantations, next to that of the land being well suited for tea cultivation, may, no doubt, be traced to a good system of management; that is, the young plants have been carefully transplanted at the proper season of the year, when the air was charged with moisture, and they have not been destroyed by excessive irrigation afterwards.  The other zemindaree plantation at Lohba might have been now in full bearing had the same system been followed.

From the description thus given, it will be observed that I consider the Kutoor plantations in a most flourishing condition.  And I have no doubt they will continue to flourish, and soon convince the zemindars of the value of tea cultivation, providing three things, intimately connected with