MATE OR PARAGUAY TEA.
Tea-drinking of an entirely new kind the tra veller meets in the lower half of South America. At first the bitter taste, and the unfamiliar aro matic taste, of the universal beverage of the people are ndt at all to his liking. But if he sets his mind to it, a liking for the "yerba de mate" grows on him. He takes it with pleasure after hours of exercise, and finds his drooping spirits revived, his tired feeling gone.
The plant whose leaves are used in making this beverage is a holly that grows as the principal species in vast forests in Paraguay and neighbor ing countries. A few plantations of the tree have been set, anticipating a possible exhaustion of the native supply. The branches are gathered and
dried over fires. Then the leaves are beaten off and broken or ground into a coarse powder. The highest market grade of the dried herb comes from the youngest leaves. The cheapest grade has twigs and leaf stems in it.
Mate is brewed by pouring hot water over a pinch of the tea leaves held in the bottom of the cup by a disk of wire netting to keep the liquid clear of "grounds." Sugar is added. The tea is drunk through a tube used as we do a straw for lemonade. But there is a perforated bulb at the base of the tube that strains the tea.