“The use of tea in China dates from the greatest antiquity. The Japanese attribute to it a miraculous origin. They say that Darma, a very pious prince, and son of an Indian king, landed in China in the year 510 of the Christian era, and wishing to edify mankind by his example, imposed upon himself privations of all kinds. It happened, however, that after several years of great fatigue, in spite of his care he fell asleep; and believing he had violated his oath, and in order to fulfil it faithfully for the future, he cut off his eyelids and threw them on the ground. The next day, returning towards the same spot, he found them changed into a little shrub, hitherto unknown to the earth. He eat some of the leaves, which made him merry and restored his former strength. Having recommended the same food to his disciples, the reputation of tea soon spread, and has continued in use since that time.”—Desfontaines. See, also, Kœmpfer, in his “Aménités Exotiques.”
We are ignorant of the period and motives which persuaded the Chinese to use tea in infusion. Perhaps it was to render water more agreeable, which is said to be brackish and of a bad taste in many parts of China. In 1641, Tulpius, a Dutch physician, was the first to mention this plant, in a dissertation he published. In 1657, Joncquet, a French physician, called it the divine plant, and compared it to ambrosia. In 1679, Cornelius Bentekoe, a Dutch physician, published a treatise, in which he declared himself a partisan of tea, and asserted that this beverage in no way could injure the stomach, even if drank to the extent of two hundred cups a day. Many of his countrymen went even beyond this: they made of it a universal panacea.
As at first the leaves of the tea plant were rare and but little known, many persons thought they had discovered in Europe what others fetched from such a distance. Thus Simon Pauli introduced the royal pimento (myria gale of Linn.), as the real tea of China. Others thought to have found the marvellous virtues of tea in plants growing in our own country, such as marjoram, veronica, myrtle, sage, agrimony, &c.; but it happily ended in granting the preference to the real tea of China and Japan.
COFFEE.
In the trade five principal kinds of coffee are enumerated—or rather, five sorts—according to the different countries from whence they come, although all derived from the same kind of coffee tree, Coffea Arabica. These five kinds are as follows:—
1st. Mocha coffee, thus called from the country whence this kind of coffee originates, a plant now so commonly spread over every American colony. The grain of this coffee is generally round and small. From Mocha coffee is derived the most sweet and agreeable beverage; it is also the most esteemed, the dearest, and holds the first rank in the trade.
2nd. The Bourbon coffee, cultivated in the Island of Bourbon; for some time it occupied the second place in quality, but the gourmets prefer to it coffee from Martinique or Guadaloupe.
3rd. There are several kinds of Martinique or Guadaloupe, distinguished by the various preparations.
4th. The Cayenne coffee. This kind is less known on account of the small quantity cultivated there, and introduced in trade. This kind is superior to the Martinique coffee.