EAELT HISTORY OF COFFEE. 59 



coffee steadily resumed the course of its popular conquests, whicli 

 are still extending. 



For more than fifty years after the introduction of the bev- 

 erage into Europe, Arabia stni furnished the entire coffee-supply 

 of the world — a necessarily very limited quantity. Then the 

 Hollanders, in the second decade of the eighteenth century, made 

 their appearance in the markets of Europe with the product 

 of Java. In a few years the culture extended to the West 

 Indies, where it spread with wonderful rapidity. Those islands 

 had become, in the beginning of the present century, the chief 

 source of supply, the industry in Java having in the meantime 

 progressed at a comparatively slow pace. Another revolution 

 worked itself out toward the middle of the century. There was 

 witnessed the gradual decline and almost abandonment of coffee- 

 production in the West Indies, brought about by low prices, the 

 scarcity of labor, political disturbances, the adoption of more re- 

 munerative cultures, etc. But Java, in the East, had already de- 

 veloped to vast proportions her coffee-industry, while an immense 

 coffee-producing power was growing up in South America — Brazil 

 not only soon overtook Java, but continued to advance, until, at 

 the present day, more than one-half of the coffee consumed in the 

 world issues from her fields. Java now holds the second rank in 

 the list of coffee-producers, while Ceylon follows close on the 

 heels of the Dutch Island, and, of late, Southern India and Central 

 America have assumed a very decided importance as coffee-pro- 

 ducing countries. Thus Brazil, in the Western Hemisphere, and 

 Java and Sumatra, Ceylon and India, in the Eastern, constitute at 

 this time the great centres of coffee-production, with minor areas 

 of culture scattered in the West Indies, Mexico, South and Central 

 America, Arabia, the Eastern Archipelago, and the western and 

 eastern coasts of Africa. 



