var. sinensis). Indigenous Assam tea plant was first mentioned by a historian called Samuel Baidon who published Tea in Assam in 1877. History While on a trade expedition through the Assam area with Singpho in 1823 Robert Bruce was introduced to a plant with which the Singpho and Khamti people made beverages and food. Through his brother, Charles Alexander Bruce who was in Sadiya, samples were sent to botanist Nathaniel Wallich who mistook it for camellia kissi. It was not until over a decade later that the Singpho's plant would be recognized as being the same plant as the Camellia sinensis growing in China, after Francis Jenkins and Andrew Charlton responded to the request of the British East India Company's Tea Committee for its agents to review prospects for establishing a source of tea outside of China. Charles Bruce guided a team, including Nathaniel Wallich, William Griffith and John McClelland, dispatched from the Tea Committee in 1836, to review the plant in its natural growing conditions around Sadiya. It was cultivated in the company's experimental garden with the first batch shipped to London in 1838 and auctioned in January 1839. Though it sold well the batch was noted as lacking fragrance compared to the tea from China which had been selectively cultivated for hundreds of years and having a dullness thought to be a consequence of inexperienced processing. That same year, two companies were incorporated to pursue the tea's development in Assam: the Assam Tea Association in London and the Bengal Tea Association in Kolkata, though they quickly amalgamated to form the Assam Company. Despite early proponents such as Maniram Dewan, British-led land reforms such as the Waste Lands Act to clear and privatize plots of land for agricultural purposes, the Assam Company struggled and was forced to reorganize in 1847. Similarly, despite having access to a large source of inexpensive labour, including tea-makers smuggled out of China, indentured Indians, and refugees from famine-stricken areas, Assam at the time was a sparsely-populated, hot and humid undeveloped area and many died of disease. Despite the poor results, investment came from Britain to establish additional tea gardens, such as the Jorehaut Tea Company around Jorhat, in 1860s though by 1870 56 of the 60 companies operating tea gardens in Assam went bankrupt. Industrial mechanization in the 1870s finally resulted in profitable companies as more plucked leaves were able to be dried without