According to local tradition, the coffee-plant was intro- 

 duced into Mysore by a Mussulman pilgrim, named Baba 

 Booden, who came from Arabia about two hundred years 

 ago, and took up his abode as a hermit in the uninha- 

 bited hills in the Nuggur Division named after him, and 

 where he established a college, which still exists, endowed by 

 government. It is said that he brought some coffee-berries 

 from. Mocha, which he planted near to his hermitage, about 

 which there are now to be seen some very old coffee-trees. 

 However this may be, there is no doubt that the coffee-plant 

 has been known in that neighbourhood from time imme- 

 morial, but the berry has never come into general use among 

 the people for a beverage. It is only of late years that the 

 coffee trade of these districts has become of any magnitude, 

 or that planting has been carried to any important extent. 

 The export of coffee from British India, which in 1851 was 

 only 3239 tons, had increased in 1861 to 8535 tons ; about 

 one-fourth of this is shipped from Bombay, and nearly all 

 the remainder from Madras. 



More than thirty years ago a few Europeans were engaged 

 in coffee planting near Chickmoogloor, a few miles from the 

 Bababooden Hills. About twenty years ago the plantation 

 producing the well-known coffee called " Cannon's Mysore," 

 and others, on the Memzera, or " Bad Mountain," was com- 

 menced by two enterprising gentlemen. The success of 

 these has induced many more Europeans to plant coffee there, 

 and the consequence is that the coffee trade of Mysore 

 bids fair to emulate that of Ceylon. It has given, also, an 

 example to other parts of India, and the plant originally 

 taken from the Bababooden Muth is now extending over tens 

 of thousands of acres in Coorg, the "Wynaad district, the 

 Neilgherry Hills, and along the Western Ghauts, north and 

 south. 



In Mysore the number of European coffee-planters has in- 



