98 
WONDERS OF THE TROPICAL FORESTS. 
lias here not only been cultivated from time immemorial, 
but is everywhere found growing wild in tb© forests. 
Here also tbe art of preparing a beverage from its 
beixies seems to have been first discovered. Arabic 
authors inform m that about four hundred 3'ears ago, a 
learned mufli of Aden, having become acquainted with 
its virtues on a jonrney to the opposite shore of Africa, 
recommended it on his return to the derviaes of bis con- 
vent m an excellent 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 
Meccah about the end of the fifteenth centary. There 
fanaticism endeavoured to oppose its progress, and in 1 5 1 1 
a council of theologians condemned it as being contraiy 
to the law of Mahomet, on account of its intoxicating like 
wine, and sentenced the CDli>rit who should be found 
indulging in his cup of coffee to be led about the town on 
the back of an ass. The Sultan of Egypt, however, who 
happened to be a great coffee-drinker himself, convoked a 
new assembly of the learned, who declared its use to be 
not only innocent but healthy ; and thus coffee advanced 
rapidly from the Bed Sea and the Nile to Syria, and from 
Asia iiiiior to Constantinople^ where the first coffee-house 
was opened in 1 5 54, 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. Accord- 
ingly the mut1;i ordered the coffee-houses to be closed ; but 
his successor dechiring coffee not to be cml, unless when 
over-roasted, they were allowed to reopen, and ever since 
the most pious Mussulman drinks his coffee without any 
scruples of conscience. Tlie commercial intercourse with 
the Levant could not fail to make Europe acquainted with 
this new source of enjoyment. In 1652^ Pasquia, a Greek, 
