HISTORY OF THE COFFEE^TREE. 



m 



of "being opaque^ aiid having, as when we utjiuiUy see 

 them, a tinge of bronze^ were translucentj and of a 

 gi'eenish4)lue color. The best are those which have 

 these characters, and at the same time are very hai'd. 

 This coftee commands a much higher price than that 

 of Java, and is superior to any raised in the archi- 

 pelago, unless it may be some that comes fi'om the 

 highlands in the interior of Sumatra. 



The coffee crop is subject to some variation, but 

 the Resident informs me that the average yield of the 

 government gardens during the last few years has 

 been no less than 37,000 piculs (5,000,000 pounds). 

 The whole number of trees belonging to the govern- 

 ment is 5,949,616, but a large proportion of these are 

 young, and therefore beai* little or no fruit. Several 

 private indi\'idual8 al^o own large plantations, that 

 yield as well in propoi-tion to the number of trees 

 they contain. The trees ai-e found to thrive best 

 above an elevation of one thousand feet. 



Tlie native name of this plant and its fruit is hopi^ 

 a corruption of the name in Dutch, the people who 

 introduced it into this archipelago. The tree, Coffea 

 Arahiea^ is a native of Africa, between the tenth and 

 fifteenth degrees of north latitude,* but it thrives 

 anywhere within the tropics on the hundreds of high 

 islands in the archipelago, as well as in the diy lands 

 where it is indigenous. It was as late as 1450, about 

 half a century before the discovery of our continent, 

 that it was brought over from Abyssinia to the moun- 

 tainotis parts of Arabia. In this way it happened 

 that the Arabians were the people who introduced it 



* Crawfiird's " Diottonary of the India Islands." 



