592 Coffee. [December, 



A Brazil correspondent of tlie New York Journal of Commerce 

 gives an interesting sketcli of tlie history of this universal beverage, 

 so popular among all nations, whether civilized or semi-civilized, 

 which have become acquainted with its properties. Wherever it has 

 gained a foothold, its advance has been sure. It has never made a 

 retroo-rade movement, though assailed by ecclesiastical bodies, or by 

 colleges of physicians of every school. Mohammedan Muftis thun- 

 dered anathemas against it more than three centuries ago ; the wit- 

 tiest writers of the Court of Louis XIV. squibbed it. The Illustri- 

 ous Dr. Murray (Allopathic) reproaches coffee, when indulged in 

 too freely, with producing vertigo, trembling of the limbs, cutaneous 

 eruptions on the face, hysterics, hypochondria, etc., etc. Hahne- 

 mann, the great high priest of homeopathy, accuses it even of caus- 

 ing the decline of the German (his own) race. 



Coffee is a native of Abyssinia, and not of Arabia, as many be- 

 lieve, and abounds in the province of Kaffa, whence it derives its 

 name. The coffee tree was not transplanted from Abyssinia into 

 Asia until the fifteenth century, when its culture was begun in 

 Arabia Felix, where, in the environs of Mocha, it grows to perfection. 

 The western world learned the use of coffee from the Orientals ; but 

 how the Orientals learned to use it is a difl&cult question to solve. 

 An Arabian author of the 15th century records that it was a Mufti 

 of Aden, who, in the 9th century, was the first to use coffee. At 

 this epoch it was already known in Persia, where common tradition 

 ascribes its discovery to one Mollah Chadelly, a piou^ Musselman, 

 ■who was much troubled by drowsiness during his nocturnal medita- 

 tions. He invoked Mahomet to come to his aid, who caused his 

 faithful Mollah to meet with a goat-herd, who led him to a coffee 

 tree, and informed him that whenever his goats ate of the berry of 

 that tree, they passed the whole night wide awake, leaping and ca- 

 pering. The devout Mollah prepared an infusion of the berry, which, 

 after drinking, gave him for the whole night a most delectable state 

 of sleeplessness. He made known his discovery, which was adopted 

 by all the dervishes and doctors of the land, and the new beverage 

 rapidly became popular over the whole Orient. There are other 

 versions of the discovery of the use of coffee as a beverage. It is 



