AMERICAN COFFEES. 1 53 



finding it paying better than corn or potatoes. Efforts 

 are also being made to introduce the industry into New 

 Zealand and other of the Antipodean colonies. This 

 list does not by any means exhaust the possible spots 

 or sections in Polynesia where coffee is or may be 

 grown with the greatest advantage, touching only the 

 chief centres of the industry, and as suggesting some 

 eligible sites for the extension of the planting enterprise. 

 Fair quantities of coffee being also produced in the 

 Hebrides, Society, Friendly and many other of the 

 island groups in the South Pacific Ocean. 



As previously stated, the history of the first introduc- 

 tion of the coffee plant into the American continent is as 

 romantic as it is interesting. In 17 14 the magistrates of 

 Amsterdam presented to Louis XIV a specimen of the 

 coffee tree, which was carefully nursed in one of the 

 botanic gardens of Paris, until it eventually yielded fruit. 

 In 17 1 7 the French king sent several of the shoots from 

 it to the island of Martinique in care of one DeClieux, an 

 officer in the French naval service. The voyage being 

 long and stormy, the ship's crew were reduced to a short 

 allowance of water; for lack of which essential all but one 

 of the young plants died. DeClieux to save this remain- 

 ing slip shared with it his own scanty allowance, event- 

 ually succeeding in bringing it safely to its destination. 

 From this single plant thus heroically preserved, accord- 

 ing to De Tour, was propagated the numerous varieties 

 now to be found in the West Indies, Mexico, Central, 

 and the northern countries of South America. And 

 where, notwithstanding the fact that Coffee is indigenous 

 to the Old World it has evidently found its true habitat 

 in the New, its production at the present being many 



