Tea

The first people to drink tea were the Chinese because the bush grew wild all over the south of their country. They liked the taste, and found that the drink refreshed them. People living in Europe first learned about tea growing and drinking from a book printed in Italy in 1599. The writer claimed that tea was a wonderful medicine! Although people in Europe knew about tea in 1599, it was another fifty years before the first cargo of tea from China reached Holland. A few years later, tea was brought overland from China to Russia. The long difficult journey had to be made over mountains and across deserts. The new drink reached England in 1657. It was sold at one of the coffee houses. Only the very rich could afford to drink it.