226 OUT US JAMAICEMSIS. COFTFif 



expressly on coffer, which was priatcd at Rome in 1671. Two En^ilish tmveilers no- 

 tice tliis hevcragf at the very beginning i)f tiie seventeenth century ". Biddiilpli about 

 1C03, ani! William Kmcli in 1607. In";GS8, Mr. Kay affirms, that Loniloninight riv.il 

 Grand C'uirj in the numi)er of its coffee; houses, and that ihev were to be found, not 

 only in Uie c;ij)ital, bnt in every town of note in England. Probably the ill-judged 

 prociiun:ition of Charles II. in 1675, to shut up coffee-houses, asseminaries of sedi- 

 tion, which was suspended in a few days,.contribnted mutch to establish them. >Speak- 

 ing of it as a drink, Mr. Ray says, it was very mnch in use, and snpDoses that the Aralis 

 destroyed the vegetable qualitj- of the seeds, in order to confine their commodity within 

 themselves ; and adds, that he wondered the neighbouring nations did not contrive to 

 bring awa)' sc/tne sonpd seeds or living plants, in order to share in so lucrative a trade. 

 Tins wiis soon done ; for Nichola.s \Vttsen, burgomaster of Amsterdflnv and governor i 

 of the East India Company, desired Van Hoorn, governor of Batavia, to p'rocure from . 

 Mocha, in Aral^ia Ftlix, some beiTies of the coffee tree, to be sown at B^itavia, which 

 he having accordingly done, and, about the year 16'J0, having raised many plants from 

 seeds, sent one over to goveriior Witsen, iio presented it to the garden at Amster- 

 ilam ; it there bore fruit, whicli in a short tii;ie produced many young plants. From 

 these the East Indies and most of the gaidens in Europe have been furnished ; and so 

 eariy as the year 16"6, the coffee tree was cultivated at Fuiham bv bishop Compto-n. 



In 1714, the magistrates of Amsterdam presented Louis XIV. with a coffee tree, 

 vhich was sent to the Royal Garden at Mnrly, under the care of M. De Jnssieu, who 

 li*:d written a memoir, pri-nted in the History of the Academy of Sciences for 17'^, 

 describing the characters of the genus, with a figure of it, from ;i small tree, which he 

 had received from M. Pancras, burgomaster of Amsterdam, aiid director of the botar.ic 

 garden there. In 1718 the Dutch colony at Surinam liegan first to plant coffee, and. 

 in 1722 M. de la Motte Aigron, governor of Cayenne, contrived by an artitice to bring, 

 away a plant from Surinam, which, in the year 1725, had produced many thousa-i.ls. 

 iRochon, in his account of Madagascar, asserts, that in 1718 the inhabitants of the isle 

 of Bourbon .sent to Moka and Aden S)r some young plants of the coff-e tree, wiijrh 

 being cultivated with care, became in a few years, very productive, and the island so.^n 

 afforded tne French East India Company, a, very important ar.ticle of Ivade. In 17'.''7, 

 the French, perceiving that this acipiisition night be of great advantage in their other 

 colonies, conveyed some of tiie plants to Martinico. M. Fusee Anbiet indeed affirms,^ 

 that M. Clicux carried the first coffee plant to Martinico in 1720, and that the French; 

 East India Company sent some plants to the isle of Bourbon in 1717*; that- one plant 

 only survived, which bore fruit in 1720, and n>any >vere produced from it. From Mar- 

 tinico it most probably spread to the neigi.houring islands. It was first introduced into 

 Jamaica in the year 1728, by Sir Nicholas laws, and planted at Town well Estate, now 

 Temp!e-Hall, iii Liguanea.* In the year 1732 it was cultivated in tiiis i.dand under 

 the encouragement of -nn act, 5th Geo. il.- by which the duty \vas reduced on home 

 consumption tiom two shiliings to eighteen pence per pound. By a further reductioa 

 ofthedutVj in 1783, to six pence, the cultivation was very nnirh extended, and pro- 

 duced considerably more to the revenue than the former heavy one. On this occasion, 

 Mr. Edwards observes, " Happily for the coffee planter in the British West Indies, the 

 English market, by a prudent concession of govermnent in I7S:;, was rcn lered more, 

 open to them. Before lliut penod, the dutiiii and excise on the iinp.)rtation and con- 



sumplioa, 



* It !ia"^ bppii asserted that .sp.vfiv berries only w*re brniicht to t'lis island fionj St. Domingo, and tiiat tUe 

 ajviutr of il 'jte, raised trow one ot'tUem iu Ven-, soli; ti^ ^jr^t prodiiee at a bit a berr_v. 



