C O F 



OR, BOTANICAL DICTIONARY. 



C O F 



339 



aiul making of Coffee. This Greek was the first who sold 

 Coffee, and kept a house for this purpose in George-yard, 

 Lombard-street ; or, according to Mr. Houghton, who wrote 

 in 17<)1, in a shed in the church-yard of St. Michael's Corn- 

 hill, -which is now, says he, a scrivener's brave house : he 

 adds, that one Rastall, whom he knew, went to Leghorn in 

 1651, and there found a coffee-house ; that he met Mr. 

 D:miel Edwards there, with his Greek servant ; and that Mr. 

 Edwards was the first who brought the use of Coffee into 

 England, except it were the famous Dr. Harvey, who, some 

 say, did frequently use it. Pasqua, who first sold Coffee in 

 London, being no freeman, the ale sellers petitioned the lord- 

 mayor against him ; which induced alderman Hodges, whose 

 daughter Mr. Edwards had married, to join his coachman, 

 Bowman, who was free, as Pasqua's partner ; and thus Mr. 

 Rastall found them in 1654. For some misdemeanor, Pasqua 

 was forced to leave the country ; and Bowman, by his trade, 

 and a contribution of 1OOO sixpences, turned the shed to a 

 house. Bowman's apprentices were, first, John Painter, then 

 Humphry, from whose wife Mr. Houghton first obtained the 

 above minute account of the introduction of Coffee into 

 London. Two English travellers notice this beverage at the 

 very beginning of the seventeenth century. Biddulph, in 

 1603, says, " The Turks have for their most common drink 

 coffa, which is a black kind of drink, made of a kind of pulse 

 like peas, called coava:" and William Finch, in 1607, says, 

 "that the people in the island of Socotora have for their best 

 entertainment a china dish of cobo, a black bitterish drink, 

 made of a berry like a bay-berry, brought from Mecca, sup- 

 ped off hot." Lord Bacon mentions Coffee in 1624 ; and Mr. 

 Thevenot, the French traveller into the East, at his return 

 in 1657, brought with him some Coffee to Paris for his 

 own use. It was, however, known at Marseilles in 1644, 

 although Mons. du Tour, who wrote upon Coffee in 1685, 

 says, that the French knew nothing of it till 1645. The 

 first mention of Coffee in the English statute-books, occurred 

 in 1660. Monsieur la Roque, who published his Journey 

 into Arabia Felix in 1715, contends, that his father, having 

 been with Monsieur de la Haye, the French ambassador at 

 Constantinople, did, when he returned to Marseilles in 1644, 

 drink Coffee every day ; but he allows, notwithstanding, that 

 Thevenot was the first who taught the French to drink it : 

 however, until the year 1660, it was drunk by those only who 

 had been accustomed to it in the Levant ; but in that year 

 some bales were imported from Egypt, and in 1671 a Coffee- 

 house was opened at Marseilles ; and it was not known at 

 Paris till two years before, except among Mr. Thevenot and 

 his friends, but in that year it was effectually introduced by 

 Solyman Aga, ambassador from sultan Mahomet ; and, two 

 years after, Pascal, an Armenian, sold it publicly in the Foire 

 St. Germain, and afterwards set up a Coffee-house on the 

 Quai de 1'Ecole ; but meeting with little encouragement, he 

 left Paris, and came to London. Not long after this, spa- 

 rooms were tilted up in an elegant manner for selling 

 Coffee and other refreshments at Paris, and in a short time 

 the number of Coffee-houses was increased to three hundred. 

 In 1688 the celebrated naturalist Mr. Ray affirms, that Lon- 

 don might rival Grand Cairo in the number of its Coffee- 

 houses, and that they were to be found not only in the capital, 

 but in every town of note in England . Probably the ill- 

 judged proclamation of Charles II. against Coffee-houses, in 

 1675, contributed much to establish them. In his history of 

 plants, published also in the year 1688, Mr. Ray, speaking of 

 Coffee as a drink very much in use, supposes that the Arabs 

 destroyed the vegetable quality of the seeds, in order to 

 confine their commodity to themselves, and adds, that he 



wondered the neighbouring nations did not contrive to bring 

 away some sound seeds or living plants, in order to share in 

 so lucrative a trade : this was soon done, for Nicholas Witsen, 

 burgomaster of Amsterdam, and governor of the East India 

 company, desired" Van Hoorn, governor of Batavia, to pro- 

 cure from Mocha, in Arabia Felix, some berries of the Coffee- 

 tree, to be sown at Batavia, which was accordingly done 

 about the year 1690 : and Van Hoorn having raised many 

 plants from the seeds, sent one over to governor Witsen, who 

 presented it to the garden at Amsterdam, where it bore fruit, 

 which in a short time produced many young plants. From 

 these, the East Indies, and most of the European gardens, 

 have been supplied ; and even in the year 1696 it had reached 

 Fulham, where it was cultivated by Bishop Compton. Inl714 

 the magistrates of Amsterdam presented Louis XIV. with a 

 Coffee-tree, which was placed in the royal garden at Marli, 

 under the care of the celebrated Jussieu, who had written a 

 memoir, printed in the History of the Academy of Sciences 

 for 1713, describing the characters of the genus, with a figure 

 of it from a smaller tree, which he had received from the 

 burgomaster of Amsterdam, and director of the botanic garden 

 there. In 1718, the Dutch colony of Surinam began first to 

 plant Coffee ; and in 1722, M. de la Motte Aigron, governor 

 of Cayenne, contrived by an artifice to bring away a plant 

 from Surinam, which in the year 1725 had produced many 

 thousands. Rochon, in his account of Madagascar, asserts, 

 that in 1718 the inhabitants of the Isle of Bourbon sent to 

 Mocha and Aden for some young plants of the Coffee -tree, 

 which being carefully cultivated, in a few years became very 

 productive, and soon afforded the French East India com- 

 pany a very important article of trade, until 1727, when per- 

 ceiving that this acquisition might be of great advantage to 

 their other colonies, they conveyed some of the plants to 

 Martinico, whence it most probably spread to the neighbour- 

 ing islands ; for in the year 1732, it was cultivated in Jamaica, 

 and an act was passed to encourage its growth in that 

 island. The first plant that appeared in that island was car- 

 ried thither by Sir Nicholas Laws, and placed in the garden 

 of Townwell, at present called Temple Hall, the property of 

 Mr. Lutterel; but he dying in 1731, did not see the culti- 

 vation of it make any considerable progress. In the year 

 1752, the exportation of Coffee from Jamaica was rated at 

 60,OOO pounds weight ; in 1775, at 440,000 ; and in 1790, at 

 1,783,740. The abbe" Raynal says, that 12,550,000 pounds 

 weight is annually exported from Arabia Felix. 



2. Coffea Occidentalis ; Western Coffee Tree. Flowers 

 four-cleft ; berries one-seeded. It is upright, branching, and 

 six feet high ; leaves lanceolate-ovate, ending in a blunt pomt, 

 quite entire, shining, petioled, opposite, only on the young 

 twigs, four inches long; corolla white, very sweet-scented; 

 the flowers appear in December. It is found near Cape 

 Francois in St. Domingo, and is pretty common in the lower 

 woods of Jamaica, where Brown calls it the wild jessamine, 

 the flowers having much of the shape and smell of our white 

 jessamine. 



3. Coffea Racemosa. Very much branched : leaves nigged ; 

 racemes terminating. This is a small tree, only four feet high, 

 with many diffused round branches ; leaves ovate-lanceolate, 

 quite entire, beset with many tubercles, opposite, on short 

 petioles ; flowers subterminating, in erect brachiate racemes; 

 berry roundish, small, red, watery, one-celled, with two 

 hemispherical seeds. Native of the island of Mosambique. 



4. Coffea Zanguebariae. Corollas six-cleft ; fruit angular, 

 nerved. This is a small upright tree, six feet high, with 

 thick short spreading branches ; flowers white, axillary, 

 several together on short one-flowered peduncles ; border 



