Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/77

Rh The use of coffee spread very early and with great rapidity in the East. It penetrated Europe much more slowly, and it was first taken in France at Marseilles.

Coffee was first drunk in Paris in 1667. The seeds which furnished it were brought in small quantity by a French traveller named Thevenot. Two years afterward, in 1669, Soliman Aga, ambassador of the Sublime Porte in the time of Louis XIV., induced the courtesans of that great king to taste it, and they found it very agreeable. However, its use did not spread for a long time. It. was not until the eighteenth century that it began to be generally used.

You see that coffee has not been very long in circulation. In fact, it is scarcely a century and a half since it became an article of general consumption by the people of Europe.

Well, during many years Europe remained tributary to Arabia for this commodity. All the coffee consumed in Europe came from Arabia, and particularly from Mocha. Toward the commencement of the eighteenth century the Dutch attempted to import it into Batavia, one of their colonies in the Indian Archipelago. They succeeded very well. From Batavia some stalks were taken to Holland and put in a hothouse, where they succeeded equally well. One of these stalks was brought to France toward 1710, and was placed in the conservatory of the Jardin des Plantes, and there also it prospered and gave birth to a certain number of sprouts.

In 1720 or 1725 (I have not been able to find the precise date), an officer of the French Navy, Captain Desclieux, thought that, since Holland had cultivated coffee at Batavia, he might also acclimate it in our colonies of the Gulf of Mexico. When embarking for Martinique, he took from the Jardin des Plantes three stalks of coffee, and carried them with him. The voyage was long and difficult, by reason of contrary winds. The supply of water proving insufficient, it was necessary to put the crew on rations. Captain Desclieux, like the others, had but a small quantity of water to drink each day. He divided it with his coffee plants. Notwithstanding all his care, two died on the passage; only one arrived safe and sound at Martinique. Put at once into the earth, it prospered so much and so well that from it have descended all the coffee trees now spread over the Antilles and tropical America. Twenty years after, our Western colonies exported millions of pounds of coffee.

You see the coffee tree, starting from Africa, has reached the extremity of Asia on the east and America on the west. Hence, it has nearly travelled round the world. Now, in this long voyage, coffee has become modified.

Passing by the tree, of which we know little, let us consider the seed. We need not be grocers to know the different qualities of coffees and their different production. Nobody would confound Mocha with Bourbon, Rio Janeiro with Martinique. Each of these seeds