THE COFFEE-TREE. 179 



these holy men brought coffee into vogue, and its use spreading 

 from tribe to tribe, and from town to town, finally reached 

 Meccah about the end of the fifteenth century. There fanaticism 

 endeavoured to oppose its progress, and in 1511 a council of 

 theologians condemned it as being contrary to the law of 

 Mahomet, on account of its intoxicating like wine, and 

 sentenced the culprit who should be found indulging in his 

 cup of coffee to be led about the town on the back of an ass. 

 The sultan of Egypt, however, who happened to ha a great 

 coffee-drinker himself, convoked a new assembly of the learned, 

 who declared its use to be not only innocent but healthy ; 

 and thus coffee advanced rapidly from the Eed Sea and the 

 Nile to Syria, and from Asia Minor to Constantinople, where 

 the first coffee-house was opened in 1554, and soon called forth 

 a number of rival establishments. But here also the zealots . 

 began to murmur at the mosques being neglected for the 

 attractions of the ungodly coffee divans, and declaimed against 

 it from the Koran, which positively says that coal is not of the?" 

 number of things created by God for good. Accordingly the 

 mufti ordered the coffee-houses to be closed ; but his successor 

 declaring coffee not to be coal, unless when over-roasted, they 

 were allowed to re-open, and ever since the most pious 

 mussulman drinks his coffee without any scruples of conscience. 

 The commercial intercourse with the Levant could not fail to 

 make Europe acquainted with this new source of enjoyment. 

 In 1652, Pasquia, a Greek, opened the first coffee-house in 

 London, and twenty years later the first French cafes were 

 established in Paris and Marseilles. 



As the demand for coffee continually increased, the small 

 province of Yemen, the only country which at that time supplied 

 the market, could no longer produce a sufficient quantity, and 

 the high price of the article naturally prompted the European 

 governments to introduce the cultivation of so valuable a plant 

 into their colonies. The islands of Mauritius and Bourbon 

 took the lead in 1718, and Batavia followed in 1723. Some 

 ^ears before, a few plants had been sent to Amsterdam, one of 

 which found its way to Marly, where it was multiplied by seeds. 

 Captain Descleux, a French naval officer, took some of these 

 young coffee-plants with him to Martinique, desirous of adding 

 a new source of wealth to the resources of the colony. The 



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