HISTORY. 



gigantic extent to which the production and 

 consumption of Coffee has been carried of late 

 years, the vast number of hands employed in its 

 cultivation and preparation for market, including the 

 great quantity of shipping necessary for its transporta- 

 tion^ and the enormous amount of capital invested in its 

 production and trade, naturally invests the commodity, 

 pot only from a commercial but also from a moral and 

 social standpoint, with great importance, creating as it 

 does an industry of almost fabulous proportions and 

 capital, rendering it second to no other article of food or 

 drink in the world. The early history of Coffee, how- 

 ever, like that of Tea, is involved in considerable ob- 

 scurity, the almost total absence of any historical fact 

 being only compensated for by an unusual profusion of 

 legendary and conjectural statements, or by purely mythi- 

 cal stories. As far as can be ascertained, it was not 

 known to the ancients, although one writer claims that 

 it is mentioned in the Bible, making the bold assertion 

 that the potion offered to King David on a certain occa- 

 sion, at the hands of the fair Abigail, to calm the temper 

 of the excited monarch, must have been Coffee, basing 

 his argument on the untenable grounds that the beverage, 

 whatever! it may have.-been, was prepared from something 

 roaMeld. s Yet no mention of the plant or its product is to be 

 among the Egypt^as in the time of the Pharaohs, 



