10 



the enormous one of forty crowns a pound. In 1672, an 

 Armenian opened in Paris the first coffee-house, on the plan 

 of those he had seen at Constantinople. Pascal was followed 

 by a crowd of imitators, whose numbers became so great in 

 1676, that it was found necessary to form them into a society 

 by statute. 



As to the European names of coffee; they are all, observes 

 Mr. Crawfurd, from the same source, the old Arabic word for 

 wine, kahwab, which is composed of a very guttural k, un- 

 pronounceable by Europeans, except by an awkward effort, of 

 the labial w, and of two short vowels a, with an aspirate at 

 the end of each syllable. The Turks have changed the labial 

 w into v, and the European nations, who took the word 

 directly from them, have corrupted the word by converting 

 the labial v into the labial f, by substituting an ordinary k 

 or hard c for the Arabic guttural, by omitting both the aspi- 

 rates, and by converting the last short a into e, or as with 

 ourselves, always the greatest corruptors of orthography, 

 changing both the vowels. 



The Mahomedans distinguish three kinds of kahwah 

 wine, or anything that inebriates ; the extract from the pulp 

 which contains the coffee-berry ; and that from the berry 

 itself. The 'deep brown colour of the liquor occasioned its 

 being called the syrup of the Indian mulberry, under which 

 specious name it first became fashionable in Europe ; and 

 some who imported the pulp called it the " flower of the 

 coffee-tree," but it failed in use. Coffee is used in vast quan- 

 tities by the Turks and Arabians, and with peculiar propriety, 

 as it counteracts the narcotic effects of opium, v to the use of 

 which they are so much addicted. 



The history of the cultivation of coffee by European 

 nations in their colonies is singular. The old Dutch East 

 India Company carried on some traffic with the Arabian 

 ports in the Red Sea; and about the year 1690, the Dutch 



