CHAPTEE Yin. 



EAKLT HISTORY OF COFFEE. 



In Abyssinia and Ethiopia, where the coffee-plant is found both 

 wild and in a cultivated state, coffee seems to have been used as 

 a beverage from time immemorial. In those remote regions the 

 Arabs are said to have first tasted the fragrant draught, and, 

 wondering much and approving greatly, to have brought over, 

 toward the beginning of the fifteenth century, some of the pre- 

 cious beans into their own country, where the use of the bev^ 

 erage spread rapidly. Different accounts, however, are given by 

 the Arabs of the way in which this favorite drink of theirs first 

 gained introduction into Arabia. In an Arab manuscript, pre- 

 served in one of the public libraries of Paris, it is stated that the 

 Mufti of Aden, travelling in Persia, became acquainted there with 

 the use of coffee, which had for long years been known in that 

 cotmtry and in Africa, and introduced it into Arabia. The date 

 of this important event is also laid down, in the above-mentioned 

 work, at about the beginning of the fifteenth century. This makes 

 the introduction of coffee into Arabia a comparatively recent oc- 

 crarence — dating not much more than hklf a century before the 

 discovery of America, and about eight hundred years after the 

 time of Mahomet. According to another version, a moUah, rejoic- 

 ing in the name of Chadeby, was the first Arab to take coffee, and 

 this he did to conquer a perpetual sleepiness which sadly inter- 

 fered with his evening prayers. Still another legend ascribes to 

 the vigilant superior of an Arabian monastery the first experi- 

 ment in coffee-drinking. This worthy man, it seems, had end- 

 less trouble with his dervishes, from their invariable tendency to 

 sleep during evening service. Having heard of the peculiar ef- 

 fects of coffee upon the goats which browsed upon the plant, he 



