Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/130

Vireville, Charles Sept et son Epoque, 3 vols, 1862-1865; Bonamy, Mémoires sur les Dernières années de la vie de Jacques Cœur; Trouve, Jacques Cœur, 1840; Louis Raynal, Histoire du Berry, vol. iii.; Louisa Costello, Jacques Cœur, the French Argonaut, London, 1847.

COFFEE (French, Café; German, Kaffee). This important and valuable article of food is the produce chiefly of Coffea arabica, a Rubiaceous plant indigenous to Abyssinia, which, however, as cultivated originally, spread outwards from the southern parts of Arabia. The name is probably derived from the Arabic K’hāwah, although by some it has been traced to Caffa, a province in Abyssinia, in which the tree grows wild. In the genus Coffea, to which the common coffee tree belongs, from 50 to 60 species were formerly enumerated, scattered throughout the tropical parts of both hemispheres; but by referring the American plants to a different genus, the list is now restricted to about 22 species. Of these 7 belong geographically to Asia; and of the 15 African species 11 are found on the west coast, 2 in Central and East Africa, and 2 are natives of Mauritius. Besides being found wild in Abyssinia, the common coffee plant appears to be widely disseminated in Africa, having been seen on the shores of the Victoria Nyanza and in Angola on the west coast. Within the last year or two considerable attention has been devoted to a West African species, C. liberica, belonging to the Liberian coast, with a view to its extensive introduction and cultivation. Its produce, obtained from native plants, have been several years in the English market.

Fig. 1.—Branch of Coffee arabica

The common coffee shrub or tree is an evergreen plant, which under natural conditions grows to a height of from 18 to 20 feet, with oblong-ovate, acuminate, smooth, and shining leaves, measuring about 6 inches in length by 2$\scriptstyle {\frac {1}{2}}$ wide. Its flowers, which are produced in dense clusters in the axils of the leaves, have a five-toothed calyx, a tubular five-parted corolla, five stamens, and a single bifid style. The flowers are pure white in colour, with a rich fragrant odour, and the plants in blossom have a lovely and attractive appearance, but the bloom is very evanescent. The fruit is a fleshy berry, having the appearance and size of a small cherry, and as it ripens it assumes a dark red colour. Each fruit contains two seeds embedded in a yellowish pulp, and the seeds are enclosed in a thin membranous endocarp (the parchment). The seeds which constitute the raw coffee of commerce are planoconvex in form, the flat surfaces which are laid against each other within the berry having a longitudinal furrow or groove. They are of a soft, semi-translucent, bluish or greenish colour, hard and tough in texture. The regions found to be best adapted for the cultivation of coffee are well-watered mountain slopes at an elevation ranging from 1000 to 4000 feet above sea-level, in latitudes lying between 15° N. and 15° S., although it is successfully cultivated from 25° N. to 30° S. of the equator in situations where the temperature does not fall beneath 55° Fahr. The Liberian coffee plant, C. liberica, which has been brought forward as a rival to the ordinarily cultivated species, is described as a large leaved and large-fruited plant of a robust and hardy constitution. The seeds yield a highly aromatic and fine-flavoured coffee; and so prolific is the plant, that a single tree is said to have yielded the enormous quantity of 16 lb weight at one gathering. It is a tree, moreover, which grows at low altitudes, and it probably would flourish in many situations which have been proved to be unsuitable for the Arabian coffee. Should it come up to the sanguine expectations of Ceylon planters and others to whom it has been submitted, there is no doubt that it will prove a formidable rival to the species which has hitherto received the exclusive attention of planters. It grows wild in great abundance along the whole of the Guinea coast.

The early history of coffee as an economic product is involved in considerable obscurity, the absence of historical fact being compensated for by an unusual profusion of conjectural statements and by purely mythical stories. According to a statement contained in a manuscript belonging to the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the use of coffee was known at a period so remote as 875 A.D., or exactly 1000 years ago. In a treatise published in 1566 by an Arab sheikh it is stated that a knowledge of coffee was first brought from Abyssinia into Arabia about the beginning of the 15th century by a learned and pious Sheikh Djemal-eddin-Ebn-Abou-Alfagger. According to the treatise alluded to the use of coffee as a beverage was prevalent among the Abyssinians from the most remote period, and in Arabia the beverage when first introduced only supplanted a preparation from the leaves of the cat, Celastrus edulis. Its peculiar property of dissipating drowsiness and preventing sleep was taken advantage of in connection with the prolonged religious services of the Mahometans, and its use as a devotional antisoporific stirred up a fierce opposition on the part of the strictly orthodox and conservative section of the priests. Coffee was by them held to be an intoxicant beverage, and therefore prohibited by the Koran; and the dreadful penalties of an outraged sacred law were held over the heads of all who became addicted to its use. Notwithstanding the threats of divine retribution, and though all manner of devices were adopted to check its growth, the coffee-drinking habit spread rapidly among the Arabian Mahometans, and the growth of coffee as well as its use as a national beverage became as inseparably associated with Arabia as tea is with China. For about two centuries the entire supply of the world, which, however, was then limited, was obtained from the province of Yemen in South Arabia, where the celebrated Mocha or Mokha is still cultivated.

The knowledge of and taste for coffee spread but slowly outwards from Arabia Felix, and it was not till the middle of the 16th century that coffee-houses were established in Constantinople. Here also the new habit excited considerable commotion among the ecclesiastical public. The popularity of the coffee-houses had a depressing influence on the attendance at the mosques, and on that account a fierce hostility was excited among the religious orders against the new beverage. They laid their grievances before the sultan, who imposed a heavy tax upon the coffee-houses, notwithstanding which they flourished and extended. After the lapse of another hundred years coffee reached Great Britain, a coffee-house having been opened in 1652 in London by a Greek, Pasqua Rossie. Rossie came from Smyrna with Mr D. Edwards, a Turkey merchant, and in the capacity of servant he prepared coffee daily for Mr Edwards and his visitors. So popular did the new drink become with Mr Edwards's friends that their visits occasioned him great inconvenience to obviate which he