HISTORY OF MAURITIUS. 
521 
extremities, and appeared to me have as fine an odour as the cultivated coffee, but 
of a more bitter flavour. 
“ In other parts of the island there is a fourth kind of coffee, which is not ge¬ 
nerally known. The plant is indigenous, and grows as high as the forest trees: 
its stem is slender, its leaves are long, broad, thick, of a dark green above, and 
somewhat paler beneath; the flowers grow in bunches at the extremity of the 
branches; they are white, and without smell, with five petals, and a white cup 
divided into five parts. The fruit, which in its early state is green, is round, but 
inclined to an oval, somewhat less than the cherry of the ordinary coffee; it whitens 
as it ripens, and becomes brown in drying; the pulp, which is white, is doughy, and 
of a sweetish taste; it generally envelopes two very small hemispheric berries, which 
are covered with a brown pellicule, having a tough coat; they are grey, and some¬ 
what pointed at one of the extremities. I made several persons taste it, who all found 
it of an agreeable flavour. My design was to form some plantations of it, on the 
presumption that cultivation, the open air, and the sun, would impregnate it with 
new and better qualities; but circumstances having determined me to quit the 
colony, I did not execute my design. This kind of coffee is to be met with in the 
environs of Palma, and even in the neighbourhood of the Reduit.* I think it supe¬ 
rior to that of Moka; and my opinion was confirmed by all who tasted it. 
« It is usual, in the Isles of France and Bourbon, to dry the coffee cherry, and 
afterwards pound it, in order to take away the envellopes of the bean, according 
to the method of the Arabs of Yemen. 
“ I caused a water-mill to be built upon my plantation, which turns one millstone 
over another that is immoveable. The coffee in the shell falls of itself from the loft, 
which is above, between two millstones, and the necessary process is performed with¬ 
out the labour of hands. Nothing more was to be done but to separate the berries 
by winnowing, and to take away those that were spoiled or bruised.” 
* The country-house of the Governor of Mauritius. 
3 x 
