CULTIVATION OF COFFEE IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES. 43 

 foliage shelters their roots from the tropical heat of the 



to 



sun. 



Niebuhr states that the plant was brought from Abyssinia 

 by the Arabs to Yemen. For ages it is believed to have 

 been cultivated in the hilly range of Jabal. Here the 

 plants are grown in a soil continually irrigated, and where 

 trees of various kinds are interspersed among the plantations, 

 whose shade has a beneficial effect upon the coffee bushes. 

 The fruit begins to ripen in February ; and when the seeds 

 are prepared they are conveyed to the city of Beit el Fakih, 

 whence part goes to Mocha, another portion to Hodeida 

 and Loheia, whence it finds its way to Djedda and Suez, 

 for the Turkish and European markets. 



Coffee, it has been proved, can be cultivated with great ease 

 and to any extent in the republic of Liberia, being indigenous 

 to the soil and found there in abundance. It bears more fruit 

 there and lasts longer than elsewhere. A single tree at Mora- 

 via, it is said, has yielded the enormous quantity of 16 pounds 

 at one gathering. It was estimated some years since that there 

 were about 30,000 coffee-trees in one of the counties, that of 

 Grand Bassa, and the quality of the produce was stated to be 

 equal to the best Java. About the villages and settlements of 

 the Sherbro River and Sierra Leone, wild coffee-trees are very 

 abundant. 



If, as it has been computed, there are now consumed 

 annually a thousand million pounds of the precious bean, 

 Coffee can no longer be said to hold an insignificant place 

 among the staples of trade. On the contrary, its impor- 

 tance as such can hardly be over-estimated, when it is remem- 

 bered to what vast multitudes of persons its cultivation, 

 transportation, and preparation for use afford profitable means 

 of support. 



There is scarcely any other item of commerce that has made 



