AND LOWER EGYPT. I93 



to Batiouh. If you wish to be supplied with excel- 

 lent coffee, you must go to one of these three places 

 to find it. When once it arrived at Cairo, or had 

 crossed the Nile, it was no longer pure. Merchants 

 were waiting there to mix it with the common cof- 

 fee of America. At Alexandria it underwent a se- 

 cond mixture by the factors who forwarded it to 

 Marseilles, where they did not fail again to adulte- 

 rate it ; so that the pretended Mokka coffee, which is 

 used in France, is often the growth of the American 

 colonies, with about a third, and seldom with a 

 half of the genuine coffee of Yemen. When I was 

 at Kous an hundred weight of this coffee, unadul- 

 terated, and of the first quality, cost in that place 

 fourteen and a half chequins of Egypt, which is 

 one hundred and five franks of our money (about 

 4/. 6s. Sd. sterling), or tenpence halfpenny the 

 pound. 



If to prime cost is added the expense of convey- 

 ing it to Cairo, the duties which are paid there, the 

 charges for loading and unloading, those for trans- 

 porting it to Alexandria, freight to Marseilles, the 

 exorbitant and arbitrary duties with which that 

 commodity is there loaded, as the importation of it 

 was prohibited in France, and if to these are added 

 commission and the expense of grinding, how is it 

 possible to bclievethatthey should have real Mokka 



VOL. Ill, o coffee 



