I 
MOCHA. 363 
1738 the English must have arrived, as, according to Niebuhr, they 
were there when the French bombarded the town, and obhged the 
Dola to pay his debts, and reduce the duties from three to two 
and a half per cent. Mocha was probably then at its highest state 
of prosperity, when the English, the French, and the Dutch carried 
on a regular trade with it, and by means of the navigation round 
the Cape of Good Hope the expense of the freight of coffee was 
much lessened, and the consumption of it in Europe began pro- 
portionably to increase. 
Coffee is the only article of trade produced in Arabia, and for- 
merly the whole of this was carried from Loheia, by dows, to 
Jidda, and thence, either by the caravan of pilgrims to Constanti- 
nople, or, in large Turkish vessels by sea, to Suez, and across Egypt 
to Alexandria ; whence it found its way to every part of Europe. 
As early however as the beginning of the last century, the large 
European vessels began to carry the coffee round the Cape of Good 
Hope ; which so much reduced the duties in Egypt, that the Porte 
sent an embassy to Sana to complain of this new system of trade, 
and to request that no coffee might be exported except through 
Egypt. The average quantity, that annually went up to Jidda, was 
about sixteen thousand bales till the year 1803, when a single 
American ship appeared, and by the great profit of her voyage, 
induced so many others to follow her example, that the quantity 
sent to Egypt was reduced nearly one half. Previously to this 
event, the Porte seems to have had little cause of complaint against 
the European merchants, as will appear from the following account 
of the quantity of coffee exported by them during the eight years 
prior to 1 803. 
VOL. II. 3 a 
