Arabs gave the first written account of coffee, and first used it in
the liquid form. Burton, in his "Anatomy of Melancholy," mentions it as
early as 1621. "The Turks have a drink they call coffee, (for they use
no wine,)--so named of a berry as black as soot, and as bitter, which
they sip up as warm as they can suffer, because they find by experience
that that kind of drink, so used, helpeth digestion and procureth
alacrity."

The coffee-tree reaches a height of from six to twelve feet, and when
fully grown much resembles the apple-tree. Its leaves are green all the
year; and in almost all seasons, blossoms and green and ripe fruit may
be seen on the same tree at the same time. When the blossom falls,
there springs from it a small fruit, green at first, red when ripe, and
under its flesh, instead of a stone, is the bean or berry we call
coffee. "It has but recently become known by Europeans that the leaves
of the coffee-plant contain the same essential principle for which the
berries are so much valued. In Sumatra, the natives scarcely use
anything else. The leaves are cured like tea. And the tree will produce
leaves over a much larger _habitat_ than it will berries." Should the
decoction of the leaves prove as agreeable as that of the berry, we
shall have a much cheaper coffee; though it remains to be proved that
they contain the essential oil as well as the cafeine.

The coffees of Java, Ceylon, and Mocha are most esteemed. The
quantities produced are quite limited. Manila and Arabia together give
less than 4,500 tons. Cuba yields 5,000 tons _per annum_; St. Domingo,
18,000; Ceylon and the British East Indies, 16,000; Java, 60,000; and
Brazil, 142,000. Yet, in 1774, a Franciscan friar, named Villaso,
cultivated a single coffee-tree in the garden of the convent of San
Antonio, in Brazil. In the estimates for 1853, we find that Great