74 
COFFEE. 
trace its history, as far as relates to the use of its 
According to the Abbe Raynal, coffee came ori- 
ginally from Upper Ethiopia, where it has been 
known from time immemorial, and where it is still 
cultivated with success. From this and other parts 
of the Eastern world, very large quantities of coffee 
are annually exported to different European coun- 
tries, and form a commercial article of considera- 
ble importance. It is said that we owe the dis- 
covery of coffee to the superior of an Arabian mo- 
nastery, who gave his monks an infusion of the 
berry, that they might not sleep too sound, and 
forget their nocturnal prayers. The quality which 
coffee possesses of dissipating sleep is well known, 
and several persons are in the habit of taking it 
when on any particular occasion they are desirous of 
keeping awake during the night. 
From the borders of the Red Sea, the use of cof- 
fee passed to Medina, to Mecca, and, by means of 
the pilgrims, into all the Mahometan countries. In 
an Arabian manuscript, however, which is in the 
National Library at Paris, it is said that coffee, al- 
though originally from Arabia the Happy, was 
known in Africa and in Persia long before the 
Arabians used it for domestic purposes. Towards 
the middle of the fifteenth century, the mufti of 
Aden, a city of Arabia, travelled into Persia, where 
he saw the liquor used, and upon his return taught 
his countrymen how to make the infusion. From 
