Those were difficult days indeed. Finally in 1838, the first twelve boxes of Assam tea, manufactured from the local tea bushes, were sent to London.

It was a historic moment.

Tea had changed the socio-economic and political order of Assam and the other small countries of the region. Charles, now middle-aged, became the superintendent of these experimental tea gardens. The policies of the East India Company too had changed, and offering a pension to the Purandar Singha in 1838, the Company took over Upper Assam. Rongpur in Upper Assam became the new capital under the British, and Assam a part of the Bengal Presidency. The British now established a direct relationship with the chiefs of the Motoks and other neighbouring tribes.

Charles now worked from the headquarters at Tingrai and his entire day was spent on horseback as he visited the gardens in his own division. He was also given the additional responsibility of expanding the Naoholia tea estate. This is where Charles was now headed.

The jungle was enveloped by the smoke that rose from the fallen trees. The sounds of cutting and felling trees, the cacophony made by the elephants and their mahouts and the men shouting out instructions turned the forest into a noisy place.

Charles got off his horse along with two other Europeans, one local man and four Chinese men with pigtails.

A group of workers were planting saplings. While one lot dug holes six feet apart, another group placed the foot-high saplings in them. A fourth group was busy digging drains.

These saplings had been collected from the forest; it was more profitable to use these and to expand the number of tea gardens quickly. The garden would be ready for plucking the next year.

It was important to use only the tender new leaves of young plants for tea production; they had to collect only those leaves that grew at the very top of the bush. Charles had discovered that, by cutting down the big mature trees and setting them on fire, new plants could be grown from the stumps. He, in turn, had learnt this technique from the tribes who practised ‘jhum’. It was a quick method. He was also producing saplings by sowing seeds alongside the plants. Three years later it would be accepted as the main technique used in future tea gardens.

Swathes of forest land were cleared to expand the Naoholia tea garden. Charles was more relaxed. He was watching the two Chinese tea experts instruct workers on the proper method of planting. They were picking out the plants that were a foot tall and straight, discarding the others. They then instructed the workers to put four to five plants together in the same hole. This technique was explained to the local man who would later be in charge of the plants.

The work was slow, and the workers had to rely on sign language to communicate with the Chinese experts. This sometimes annoyed Charles, but there was nothing he could do, for without the experts the local workers wouldn’t know how to proceed. Besides, he had been instructed by the East India Company to treat the Chinese with utmost care so that they would not be dissatisfied in any way. At present, they were the company’s most valuable assets. The heads of the East India Company, as well as the Tea Committee and the Assam Company, had not accepted the Singpho method of manufacturing tea. They wanted tea similar to the tea from China, or a version better than that. In the international market too, Chinese tea had a special place and it was clear that if the company was to compete, it would be important to follow Chinese methods of cultivation.