Seeds of Arachis have been found in the Peruvian tombs at Ancon,[2066] which shows some antiquity of existence in America, and supports the opinion I expressed in 1855. Dr. Bretschneider’s study of Chinese works[2067] oversets Brown’s hypothesis. The Arachis is not mentioned in the ancient works of this country, nor even in the Pent-sao, published in the sixteenth century. He adds that he believes the plant was only introduced in the last century.
All the recent floras of Asia and Africa mention the species as a cultivated one, and most authors believe it to be of American origin. Bentham, after satisfying himself that it had not been found wild in America or elsewhere, adds that it is perhaps a form derived from one of the six other species wild in Brazil, but he does not say which. This is probable enough, for a plant provided with an efficacious and very peculiar manner of germinating does not seem of a nature to become extinct. It would have been found wild in Brazil in the same condition as the cultivated plant, if the latter were not a product of cultivation. Works on Guiana and other parts of America mention the species as a cultivated one; Grisebach[2068] says, moreover, that in several of the West India islands it becomes naturalized from cultivation.
A genus of which all the well-known species are thus placed in a single region of America can scarcely have a species common to both hemispheres; it would be too great an exception to the law of geographical botany. But then how did the species (or cultivated variety) pass from the American continent to the old world? This is hard to guess, but I am inclined to believe that the first slave-ships carried it from Brazil to Guinea, and the Portuguese from Brazil into the islands to the south of Asia, in the end of the fifteenth century.
Coffee—Coffea arabica, Linnæus.
This shrub, belonging to the family of the Rubiaceæ, is wild in Abyssinia,[2069] in the Soudan,[2070] and on the coasts of Guinea and Mozambique.[2071] Perhaps in these latter localities, so far removed from the centre, it may be naturalized from cultivation. No one has yet found it in Arabia, but this may be explained by the difficulty of penetrating into the interior of the country. If it is discovered there it will be hard to prove it wild, for the seeds, which soon lose their faculty of germinating, often spring up round the plantations and naturalize the species. This has occurred in Brazil and the West India Islands,[2072] where it is certain that the coffee plant was never indigenous.
The use of coffee seems to be very ancient in Abyssinia. Shehabeddin Ben, author of an Arab manuscript of the fifteenth century (No. 944 of the Paris Library), quoted in John Ellis’s excellent work,[2073] says that coffee had been used in Abyssinia from time immemorial. Its use, even as a drug, had not spread into the neighbouring countries, for the crusaders did not know it, and the celebrated physician Ebn Baithar, born at Malaga, who had travelled over the north of Africa and Syria at the beginning of the thirteenth century of the Christian era, does not mention coffee.[2074] In 1596 Bellus sent to de l’Ecluse some seeds from which the Egyptians extracted the drink cavé.[2075] Nearly at the same time Prosper Alpin became acquainted with coffee in Egypt itself. He speaks of the plant as the “arbor bon, cum fructu suo buna.” The name bon recurs also in early authors under the forms bunnu, buncho, bunca.[2076] The names cahue, cahua, chaubé,[2077] cavé,[2078] refer rather in Egypt and Syria to the prepared drink, whence the French word café. The name bunnu, or something similar, is certainly the primitive name of the plant which the Abyssinians still call boun.[2079]
If the use of coffee is more ancient in Abyssinia than elsewhere, that is no proof that its cultivation is very ancient. It is very possible that for centuries the berries were sought in the forests, where they were doubtless very common. According to the Arabian author quoted above, it was a mufti of Aden, nearly his contemporary, who, having seen coffee drunk in Persia, introduced the practice at Aden, whence it spread to Mocha, into Egypt, etc. He says that the coffee plant grew in Arabia.[2080] Other fables or traditions exist, according to which it was always an Arabian priest or a monk who invented the drink,[2081] but they all leave us in uncertainty as to the date of the first cultivation of the plant. However this may be, the use of coffee having been spread first in the east, afterwards in the west, in spite of a number of prohibitions and absurd conflicts,[2082] its production became important to the colonies. Boerhave tells us that the Burgermeister of Amsterdam, Nicholas Witsen, director of the East India Company, urged the Governor of Batavia, Van Hoorn, to import coffee berries from Arabia to Batavia. This was done, and in 1690 Van Hoorn sent some living plants to Witsen. These were placed in the Botanical Gardens of Amsterdam, founded by Witsen, where they bore fruit. In 1714, the magistrates of the town sent a flourishing plant covered with fruit to Louis XIV., who placed it in his garden at Marly. Coffee was also grown in the hothouses of the king’s garden in Paris. One of the professors of this establishment, Antoine de Jussieu, had already published in 1713, in the Mémoires de l’Académie des Sciences, an interesting description of the plant from one which Pancras, director of the Botanical Garden at Amsterdam, had sent to him.
The first coffee plants grown in America were introduced into Surinam by the Dutch in 1718. The Governor of Cayenne, de la Motte-Aigron, having been at Surinam, obtained some plants in secret and multiplied them in 1725.[2083] The coffee plant was introduced into Martinique by de Clieu,[2084] a naval officer, in 1720, according to Deleuze;[2085] in 1723, according to the Notices Statistiques sur les Colonies Françaises.[2086] Thence it was introduced into the other French islands, into Guadaloupe, for instance, in 1730.[2087] Sir Nicholas Lawes first grew it in Jamaica.[2088] From 1718 the French East India Company had sent plants of Mocha coffee to Bourbon;[2089] others say[2090] that it was even in 1717 that a certain Dufougerais-Grenier had coffee plants brought from Mocha into this island. It is known how the cultivation of this shrub has been extended in Java, Ceylon, the West Indies, and Brazil. Nothing prevents it from spreading in nearly all tropical countries, especially as the coffee plant thrives on sloping ground and in poor soils where other crops cannot flourish. It corresponds in tropical agriculture to the vine in Europe and tea in China.
Further details may be found in the volume published by H. Welter[2091] on the economical and commercial history of coffee. The author adds an interesting chapter on the various fair or very bad substitutes used for a commodity which it is impossible to overrate in its natural condition.
Liberian Coffee—Coffea liberica, Hiern.[2092]