562 



THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



The mountain regions of Enarea and Caffa, situated to the south of Abyssinia, aro 

 most probably the countries where the Coffee- Tree was first planted by nature, as it 

 has here not only been cultivated from time immemorial, but is everywhere found 

 growing wild in the forests. 



Here also the art of preparing a beverage from its berries seems to have been first 

 discovered. Arabic authors inform us that about four hundred years ago Gemaledie, 

 a learned mufti of Aden, having become acquainted with its virtues on a journey to 

 the opposite shore of Africa, recommended it on his return to the dervises of his 

 convent as an eycellent means for keeping awake during their devotional exercises. 

 The example of these holy men brought coffee into vogue, and its use spreading from 

 tribe to tribe, and from town to town, finally reached Mecca about the end of the 

 fifteenth century. There fanaticism endeavored to oppose its progress, and in 1511 a 

 council of theologians condemned it as being contrary to the law of Mahomet, on 

 account of its intoxicating like wine. The Sultan of Egypt, however, who happened 

 to be a great coff'ee drinker himself, convoked a new assembly of the learned, who de- 

 clared its use to be not only innocent, but healthy ; and thus coffee advanced rapidly 

 from the Red Sea and the Nile to Syria, and from Asia Minor to Constantinople, 

 where the first coffee-house was opened in 1554, and soon called forth a number of 

 rival establishments. But here also the zealots began to murmur at the mosques being 

 neglected for the attractions of the ungodly coffee divans, and declaimed against it from 

 the Koran, which positively says that coal is not of the number of things created by 

 God for good. Accordingly the mufti ordered the coffee-houses to be closed ; but his 

 successor declaring coffee not to be coal, unless when over-roasted, they were allowed 

 to re-open, and ever since the most pious mussulman drinks his coffee without any 

 scruples of conscience. The commercial intercourse with the Levant could not fail to 

 make Europe acquainted with this new source of enjoyment. In 1652, Pasqua, a 

 Greek, opened the first coffee house in London, and twenty years later the first French 

 cafes were established in Paris and Marseilles. 



As the demand for coffee continually increased, the small province of Yemen, the 

 only country which at that time supplied the market, could no longer produce a suffi- 

 cient quantity, and the high price of the article naturally prompted the European 

 governments to introduce the cultivation of so valuable a plant into their colonies. 

 The islands of Mauritius and Bourbon took the lead in 1718, and Batavia followed in 

 1723. Some years before, a few plants had been sent to Amsterdam, one of which 

 found its way to Marly, where it was multiplied by seeds. Captain Descleux, a 

 French naval officer, took some of these young coffee-plants with him to Martinique, 

 desirous of adding a new source of wealth to the resources of the colony. The passage 

 was very tedious and stormy ; water began to fail, and all the gods seemed to conspire 

 agamst the introduction of the coffee-tree into the new world. But Descleux patiently 

 endured the extremity of thirst that his tender shoots might not droop for want of 

 water, and succeeded in safely bringing over one single plant, the parent stock whence 

 all the vast coffee -plantations of the West Indies and Brazil are said to have derived 

 their origin. 



On examining the present state of coffee-production throughout the world, we find 

 that it has undergone great revolutions within the last thirty years, as some of the 

 countries that were formerly prominent in this respect now occupy but an inferior 



