Coffee and Chicory

SECTION I.. Botanical Description.

BOTANICAL DESCRIPTION.

The coffee-tree--Coffea arabica, Linn.--is a plant belonging to the natural order Cinchonaceæ. It is a large erect bush, quite smooth in every part; leaves oblong lanceolate, acuminate, shining on the upper side, wavy, deep green above, paler below; stipules subulate, undivided. Peduncles axillary, short, clustered; corollas white, funnel-shaped, sweet-scented, with four or five oblong-spreading twisted lobes. Fruit a compressed drupe, furrowed along the side, crowned by the calyx. Seeds solitary, plano-convex, with a deep furrow along the flat side. Putamen like parchment.

The generic name given to the plant by Linnæus was taken, it is said, from Coffee, a province of Narea, in Africa where it grows in abundance.

Plate 1 represents a branch of the coffee-tree in blossom and fruit, and the lettered figures at the foot have reference to the dissection of the flower and fruit.

A--The flower, cut open, to show the situation of the five filaments, with their summits lying upon them.

B--Represents the flower cup, with its four small indentations enclosing the germ or embryo seed-vessel, from the middle of which arises the style, terminated by the two reflexed spongy tops.

C--The fruit entire, marked at the top with a puncture like a navel.

D--The fruit open, to show that it consists ordinarily of two seeds, which are surrounded by the pulp.

E--The fruit cut horizontally, to show the seeds as they are placed erect, with their flat sides, together.

F--One of the seeds taken out, with the membrane or parchment upon it.

G--The same with the parchment torn open, to give a view of the seed.

H--The seed without the parchment.

Lindley and Paxton only enumerate two species: C. arabica, native of Yemen, and C. paniculata, indigenous to Guiana.

Continental botanists, however, describe no less than eight other species: four inhabiting Peru, C. microcarpa, C. umbellata, C. acuminata, and C. subsessilis; two indigenous to the West Coast of Africa, C. laurina and C. racemosa; and two natives of the East Indies, C. bengalensis and C. Indica. Some of these are probably mere varieties.

Whatever its origin may have been, there can be no doubt that there are three kinds or species now grown, differing materially from each other.

The Arabian or Mocha coffee is characterised by having a small and more brittle leaf, with branches shorter, and more upright than the Jamaica and Ceylon coffee; and by its berry being almost always, or at least very frequently, single seeded, and the seed cylindrical and plump.

The Jamaica coffee-tree has a larger and more pliable leaf, longer and more drooping branches, and berries almost always containing two seeds. (The Ethiopian.)

The great difference now existing between the two kinds, may possibly have originated in the change of soil, climate, and season, operating through a series of years; but this difference is so decided, and so strongly marked, that the veriest tyro can in a moment pronounce of either.

The East India or Bengal coffee-tree differs much from all others, but is in every respect a veritable coffee.

The leaf is smaller, and lighter green, than the foregoing variety; its berry is infinitely smaller, and when ripening, turns black instead of blood-red. Coffee made from it is of excellent flavour, and much liked.

Within the tropics, coffee thrives best at an elevation of 1200 to 3000 feet, and rarely grows above 6000 feet. It may be cultivated as far as 36° north latitude, where the mean temperature is about 70°.

In the western hemisphere coffee is grown in many of the West India Islands, in Central America, the northern republics of South America, Berbice, Cayenne, and Brazil. In Africa it is grown in Liberia and other parts of Western Africa, at St. Helena, in Egypt, and Mozambique, and a little in Natal. Passing eastward we find it in Arabia, one of the oldest seats of culture, the southern peninsula of India, Ceylon, Bourbon, Java, Célèbes, and other parts of the Eastern Archipelago, Siam, and some of the Pacific Islands.

Coffee-plants are able to bear an amount of cold which is little known or thought of. The high and cold regions of Jamaica near St. Catherine’s Peak, and the foot of the Great Blue Mountain Peak, both situated at some 6000 feet above the level of the sea; and, again, the mountains of Arabia, the Neilgherries, and Ceylon, furnish instances of the great degree of cold that the coffee-plant will endure. More than this, it is an established fact that it bears a larger, plumper, and far more aromatic berry at these altitudes than in a lower situation and in a warmer temperature. The coffee produced on plantations near the foot of the Blue Mountain Peak, in Jamaica, is the finest in the world. In Arabia, likewise, the cold at night is sometimes intense; yet who will dispute the goodness of Mocha coffee?

Nothing can exceed the beauty of the rows or walks planted with coffee-trees, from their pyramidical shape and glossy dark leaves, amongst which are hanging the ripe, scarlet-coloured berries. A writer, in his “Impressions of the West Indies,” thus speaks: “Anything in the way of cultivation more beautiful or more fragrant than a coffee-plantation I had not conceived, and oft did I say to myself that if ever I became, from health or otherwise, a cultivator of the soil within the tropics, I would cultivate the coffee-plant, even though I did so irrespective altogether of the profit that might be derived from so doing. Much has been written, and not without justice, of the rich fragrance of an orange-grove, and at home we ofttimes hear of the sweet odours of a bean-field. I have, too, often enjoyed, in the Carse of Stirling and elsewhere in Scotland, the balmy breezes as they swept over the latter, particularly when the sun had burst out with unusual strength after a shower of rain. I have likewise in Martinique, Santa Cruz, Jamaica, and Cuba, inhaled the breezes wafted from the orangeries, but not for a moment would I compare either with the exquisite aromatic odours from a coffee-plantation in full bloom, when the hill-side--covered over with regular rows of the shrubs, with their millions of jasmine-like flowers--showers down upon you as you ride up between the plants a perfume

of the most delicately delicious description. ’Tis worth going to the West Indies to see the sight and inhale the perfume.”

Plate 2 represents a coffee plantation in Jamaica.

In the culture of the tree there is a singular difference in the western and eastern hemispheres, inasmuch as in the former shade is considered injurious, whilst in the latter it is held to be desirable, if not absolutely necessary.

SECTION II.. History of Its Introduction and Distribution.

HISTORY OF ITS INTRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION.

Coffee, although taking its common and specific names from Arabia, is not a native plant of that country, but of Abyssinia, where it is found both in the wild and cultivated state. From that country it was brought to Arabia, in comparatively very recent times. Mr. Lane states that it was first used there about the year 1450. It was not known to the Arabs, therefore, for more than eight hundred years after the time of Mahomed, and was introduced only between forty and fifty years before the discovery of America. The Arabians called coffee kăhwăh, which is an old word in their language for wine. The unlucky word gave rise to a dispute about the legality of its use among the Mahomedan doctors, who, mistaking the word for the thing it represented, denounced as a narcotic that which was anti-narcotic. They were beaten, and coffee has ever since become a legitimate and favourite potable of the Arabs.

In a century its use spread to Egypt and other parts of the Turkish empire. For two centuries from its introduction into Arabia, the use of coffee seems to have been confined to the Mahomedan nations of Western Asia; and, considering its rapid spread and popularity among the European nations, it is remarkable that it has not, like tobacco, extended to the Hindus, the Hindu-Chinese, the Japanese, or the tribes of the Indian Archipelago, who no more use it than the Europeans do the betel preparation. The high price of coffee and the low cost of tobacco, most likely afford the true solution of the difference. One striking result of the use of coffee first, and then of tobacco, among the Mahomedan nations is well deserving of notice. These commodities have been in a great measure substituted for wine and spirits, which had been largely, although clandestinely, used before, and hence a great improvement in the sobriety of Arabs, Persians, and Turks. I give this interesting fact on the authority of Mr. Lane, who mentions it in the notes to his translation of the Arabian Nights.

From Turkey coffee found its way to Europe. It came in use in England before either tea or chocolate. A Turkey merchant of London, of the name of Edwards, is said to have brought the first bag of coffee to England, and his Greek servant to have made the first dish of English coffee about 1652. But it is stated in the Life of Wood, the antiquary, that “in 1651, one Jacob, a Jew, opened a coffee-house at the Angel, in the parish of St. Peter-in-the-East, Oxon; and there it was, by some who delighted in noveltie, drunk. When he left Oxon, he sold it in Old Southampton-buildings, in Holborne, near London, and was living there in 1671.”

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