September i, 1887.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
i47 
to whom, it is stated, the origin of coffee in South 
India is duo. Baba Baden proceoded ou a pilgrimage 
to Mecca about 480 years ago, and on his return 
brought a few coffee berries in his calabash, and settling 
down on these hills, planted the seeds around his 
cave ! but local tradition associates the introduction 
of coffee with one Rid Jamal Alia Magarabi, who was 
one of the successors of Baba Buden. These trees 
are, I believe, yet in existence." 
But here, as is true o£ the extracts from Austin, 
Bailey and Tennent, we are referred to no authentic 
authority. 
The truth seems to be, judging by the state- 
ments in Valentijn, that the coffee plant was not 
introduced into India until the eighteenth century was 
some years old. Curiously enough he says nothing 
about coffee in Ceylon in his time, although his 
book was published in 1720. The statement that 
a trial was made in 1G90 and the growth of the 
plant then prohibited is not authenticated. Valen- 
tijn, in his description o£ the Coromandel Coast (pp. 
180-98), gives a description o£ the coffee tree and 
a history of the use of the drink. He says nothing 
of the cultivation of the tree in Ceylon, but he 
tells us : — 
In 1707 I took C plants with me from Batavia to 
Amboiua, of which I kept 2 and gave the rest to 
this and that friend. From these, and a few that in 
the previous year Governor van der Stel had brought, 
in a very short time all the gardens of Amboina were 
so stocked, that in the third year (for I had brought 
theru when a year old) I obtaiued from these trees more 
berries thau-1 and many others had need of, and had 00 
coffee trees iu my garden alone. I also found thermit very 
palatable, and moreover not so watery as the Bataviau, 
of which after this time many plantations were be- 
gun both there and in Amboina by the natives. 
He also states that he kopt most of the trees 
low by topping, as he found that when allowed 
to ((row to their natural height the stems were 
;pindly. The following statement regarding the 
attempted cultivation of coffee by the British at 
Madras is new to us : — 
As tho Hollanders made an experiment with planting 
theso trees at Batavia, so also did the English at 
Madraspatam, but with as little and even less success, 
whercforo they also abandoned it. Tho French also 
made an experiment - with it on the island of Mas- 
carenhas, and reported in 1722 that it had succeeded 
well, and that they had brought 20 lb of it by tho 
" Triton " for tho Duke Regent. An experiment was 
mado iu Holland in the Medical Garden of Amster- 
dam whi ther this tree could ho propagated there, 
and one was obtained which the Kight Honorable 
tho Magistrate deemed worthy to bo presented to 
Louis XIV, King of France, 1711, as something un- 
common in theso countries, and moro have since been 
raised in that garden. 
With respect to coffee as a beverage ho says : — 
This drink, now so geucrally used in our land, 
that tho servant girls and seamstresses must have 
their coffco of a morning, or tho thread will not 
go through tho eye o£ the needle, was, I remember 
vory well, 10 yours ago, in this town, at little known 
as the tea-drink (there being very few, except Indian 
men, who drank it, to wit, Messrs Van den Brouke 
aud D. Do Leonardisj. Now howover the tea and 
coffee trades are each a trado of great importance. 
I remember very well, that in 1681 for the first time 
iu my lifo I drank tea at tho house of an Indian 
clergyman, and cmld not understand how men of 
sense could have a taste for a drmk that tasted no 
bitter than hay-water; and 1 wondored still more, 
when iu 1118-1 I drank green toa at the honso of 
a gentleman in Rotterdam, which had cost 80 guilders 
thu pound ; but I bad not then seen or drunk coffee, 
which however also cume hero afterwards, and was 
need by tho English. 
Hcydt, in his " Allornouostor Goographisoh- and 
Topogiaphisoher Schau-FlaU von Africa und Ost- 
Indien," 1711 (p. 155), in dedoribiug "a view o£ 
llulfsdorfi " (tic), iu which in --ho u a gaidcu 
containing various fruit trees, says that it included 
" a fine patch of coffee, from which we obtained 
every year a good supply o£ coffee beans." The 
" Beknopte Historie van de Voornaamsto Ge- 
bcurtenissen op Ceilon," compiled in 1700 at the 
oilica of the Political Secretary in Colombo, in 
describing an outbreak among the Chaliyas in 17-55, 
mentions that a large body of them " came over 
the river to Pass Ndldeij'km and the village Pelw- 
gore [Peliyagoda] , where after plundering this and 
that garden they forcibly attacked the coffee plant- 
ation Het llof allijdzomer [the garden o£ eternal 
summer] , broke down the hedge, treated the 
Company's servants there in a most impertinent 
fashion, drove off the cattle and killed two calves, 
brought out the liquors stored in the Company's 
distillery and emptied them out, broke the barrels 
into pieces, carried off the iron hooping thereof and 
finally took away with them the Lascarins who 
were on guard there." What became of the coffee 
trees is not stated ; and this is the only reference 
to the product that we can find in this book. 
Baldajus, whose book was published in 1072, seems 
to have had a very different opinion of the re- 
spective merits of coffee and tea to that held by 
Vallentijn, for he denounces the former as bilious, 
while he extols the latter highly. 
Col. Yule, with his marvellous erudition, would 
certainly have quoted in his Vocabulary some 
passages, had any existed, showing the cultivation 
of coffee in Ceylon and India before the begin- 
ning of the 18th century. He gives passages from 
Terry 1016, and Fryer 107H, showing that a bever- 
age made from the coffee berries (received from 
Aden and Mocha, no doubt) was used in India 
early in the 17th century and onwards. But there 
is not a word as to the plant being grown in 
India or Ceylon. The negative evidence is, there- 
fore, very strong against the theory o£ the eiist- 
enoe of coffee eastward of Yemen as a cultivated 
plant before the Dutch and British introduced it 
early in tlrp 17th century. But why talk of 
evidence, positive or negative, in the face of the 
assertion of the learned M. Pasenius that the 
parched corn which Abigail presented to David 
was coffee 1 The learned man of Leipzig must 
have had a presentiment of the practice which has 
been common in modern days, that oE passing 
off parched corn for coffee! 
We quote from Yule as follows: — 
Coffee, 8. Arab. Kdhwa, a word which appears to have 
been originally a term for wine.* It is probable, (herd- 
fore, that a somewhat similar word was twisted into this 
form by tho usual propensity to strive alter meaning. 
Indeed, the derivation of the uam>< has been plau-ibly 
traced to Kaffa, one of those districts of the S. Abyssin- 1 
iuu highlands (Jiuarea ami Kalfa) which appear to have 
been the original habitat Of ttie coffee plant (CoJIla 
arubica, L); and if this is correct, then Coffee is nearer 
the original namo than Kdhwa. Ou the other hand, 
Kaltira, or some form thereof, is in theearhest mentions, 
appropriated to the drink, whilst same form of the word 
Burnt is that given to the plant, anil Hi'ii is the existing 
name of the plant in Shoa. 'Ibis name is also that ap- 
plied in Yemen to the coffee-berry. There is very fair 
evidence in Arabic literature that the. use of colfee fH 
introduced into Aden by a certain Sheikh Shihabuddiii 
Dhabhaui, who had made acquaintance with it oil tho 
African coust, and who dieil in tho year Hi 875 i ''. 
a.d. 1470, so that tho introduction may be put about tho 
middle of the l.">th century, a time consistent with 
the other negative aud positive dato.t From Yemen it 
•It is curious that Ducango lias a u. T.atiu word 
Camta, 1 vimuu album et debile.' 
t Seethe extract in Do Navy's CkrtiUimatiiit Aratic 
cited below. Play fair, in his history of YeUi«n, cays 
cotfeo was fust introduced from Abyssinia by Jul 
udduj lbu Abdalla, Kudi ui Aden, iu the middle ot th : 
15th century : the putou differ*, but the timo coicoide?. 
