Note 2 — INTRODUCTORY
Reading edition
Still more rapid and wonderful has been the development of our Australian cities with their crowded harbours. But for a strange illustration of the influence of steam-power at our very doors, we may note Sir Walter Scott’s testimony, that in his day (he was my father’s friend) one small mail-cart carried the posts between London and Edinburgh, and he mentions having seen it arrive with only one letter addressed to the manager of the British Linen Banking Company.
Moreover, is it not strange to mark the development as it affects two of what we deem our daily necessaries, potatoes and tea, and remember that the former had never even been heard of till Sir Walter Raleigh imported the first, and that in 1660 Mr. Pepys described tea as ‘the new Chinese drink’! And now Britain’s annual consumption of tea is about 180,000,000 lb., of which about half comes from China and Java, and the other half from India and Ceylon.