EARLY HISTORY. 



although their trade at their period, as in the present, lay- 

 up the valley of the Nile toward Berber, its reputed 

 birthplace. It was unknown to the Greeks and Romans 

 in any form, and though claimed to have been in use 

 among the Arabs at a very remote time, no reference is 

 made to it by Mohamet or his followers up to the seventh 

 century. No account of its use is to be found during the 

 first Moslem invasion of southern Europe by Abdulrahman 

 in the ninth century, although large quantities of the 

 commodity were captured in their camp before Vienna 

 during their second invasion of jsastern Europe in the 

 seventeenth century, and it is not even alluded to by 

 any of the writers who accompanied the Crusaders into 

 Syria during the thirteenth century. 



To the Ethiopians its use is said to have been known 

 from time immemorial, and that the plant and its virtues 

 were first discovered in that country is now generally 

 admitted by all authorities on the subject. The first 

 human beings who appear to have used the Coffee-berry 

 in any form being the semi-savage tribes inhabiting 

 higher Ethiopia, to which country the Coffee-plant is 

 indigenous, and where it is to be found at the present time, 

 growing abundantly both in a wild and cultivated state. 

 Bruce, in his Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, 

 pubhshed in 1678, informs us that "The Gallae is a 

 wandering nation of Africa, who, in their incursions into 

 Abyssinia, are obliged to traverse immense deserts, and 

 being desirous of falling on the towns and villages of 

 that country without warning, carry nothing to eat with 

 them but the berries of the Coffee tree roasted and 

 pulverized, which they mix with grease to a certain con- 

 sistency that will permit of its being rolled into masses 

 about the size of billiard balls and then put in leathern 

 bags until required for use. One of these balls they 



