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Charles Bruce
Robert Bruce The mystery and the mystique, gave tea that aura of romance about it. The popular belief was that tea grew only in the high lands shrouded by the mist and clouds. Well, its true that 'high grown' teas at great altitudes make a beautiful tea. But tea also grows in lowly laying flatlands as well. That exactly where Robert Bruce had discovered indigenous Indian tea - low-lying flatlands of Assam in 1823. Robert Bruce, an early Scottish explorer ventured into Assam, north eastern state of India, covered with vast canopy of dense jungles and tribal people living in the midst. He lived with native tribes between India and Burma and discovered that those tribes knew tea and they produced tea from indigenous plants. Robert died soon after his discovery. Charles Bruce But his brother Charles Bruce took up the cause of tea. He initially sent the tea plant specimen to the East India company in Calcutta. But the company botanist rejected it as 'just another type of Camellia' - from a low-lying flat lands. It can not be the real tea! But Charles didn't give up. He kept growing a small garden of tea plants in his own backyard. In 1834, ten years latter, tea committee was appointed to explore the possibility of cultivating tea in India as the business climate in China was getting rough and the possibility of total ban on the foreign trade loomed. The committee came up with a questionnaire asking if there were any places with the climate suitable in India for tea cultivation. Charles Bruce, by this time, had his own Indian tea seeds, live plants and his own manufactured Assam tea from his own garden. He sent it to the committee for examination. It was the same botanist who rejected his earlier submission some ten years go of the same specimen, was charring the committee, and the committee reported: "we have no hesitation in declaring this discovery.... far the most important and valuable that has ever been made on matters connected with the agricultural or commercial resources of the Empire." Having admitted the above, the committee promptly went on to cultivate the Chinese tea seeds ! - which will, latter on become "the curse of the Indian tea industry" as they cross bred easily causing hawak. It was another one, mad-cap adventurer Robert Fortune who would risk it all and his life to collect those seeds of 'the curse' from China.
Learned something *****************
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