The rat, which the extension of commerce has gradually spread over the world, is still more destructive to the sugar-cane, and great pains are taken to keep it in check by poison or by its arch-enemy the cat.
The sugar-cane is also subject to the blast—a disease which no foresight can obviate, and for which human wisdom has hitherto in vain attempted to find a remedy. When this happens, the fine broad green blades become sickly, dry, and withered; soon after they appear stained in spots, and if these are carefully examined, they will be found to contain countless eggs of an insect like a bug, which are soon quickened, and cover the plants with vermin; the juice of the canes thus affected becomes sour, and no future shoot issues from the joints. The ravages of the ants concur with those of the bugs in ruining the prospects of many a sugar-field, and often a long continued drought or the fury of the tornado will destroy the hopes of the planter.
The land crabs are also very injurious to the sugar-fields, some of the species being particularly fond of the cane, the juice of which they suck and chiefly subsist on. They are of course narrowly watched, and no opportunity of catching them is lost sight of; but such is their activity in running, that they are almost always enabled to escape. They seldom go far from their burrows in day-time; and their watchfulness is such that they regain them in a moment, and disappear as soon as a man or dog comes near enough to be seen.
Harvest-time in the sugar-plantations is no less a season of gladness than in the corn-fields of England. So palatable, wholesome, and nourishing is the fresh juice of the cane, that every animal drinking freely of it derives health and vigour from its use. The meagre and sickly among the negroes exhibit a surprising alteration in a few weeks after the mill is set in action. The labouring oxen, horses, and mules, though almost constantly at work during this season, yet being indulged with plenty of the green tops and some of the scummings from the boiling-house, improve more than at any other period of the year. Even the pigs and poultry fatten on the refuse, and enjoy their share of the banquet. The wholesome effects of the juice of the sugar-cane has not escaped the attention of English physicians, and many a weak-breasted patient, instead of coughing and freezing at home over what is ironically termed a comfortable fireside, now spends his winter in the West Indian Islands, chewing the sweet cane and enjoying in January a genial warmth of seventy-two degrees in the shade.
The mountain regions of Enarea and Caffa, which the reader, on consulting a map of Africa, will find situated to the south of Abyssinia, are most probably the countries where the coffee-tree was first planted by Nature, as it has here not only been cultivated from time immemorial, but is everywhere found growing wild in the forests.
GENERAL FRASER’S COFFEE ESTATE AT RANGBODDE, CEYLON.
Here also the art of preparing a beverage from its berries seems to have been first discovered. Arabic authors inform us that about four hundred years ago, a learned mufti of Aden, having become acquainted with its virtues on a journey to the opposite shore of Africa, recommended it on his return to the dervises of his convent as an excellent means for keeping awake during their devotional exercises. The example of these holy men brought coffee into vogue, and its use spreading from tribe to tribe, and from town to town, finally reached Meccah about the end of the fifteenth century. There fanaticism endeavoured to oppose its progress, and in 1511 a council of theologians condemned it as being contrary to the law of Mahomet, on account of its intoxicating like wine, and sentenced the culprit who should be found indulging in his cup of coffee to be led about the town on the back of an ass. The sultan of Egypt, however, who happened to be a great coffee-drinker himself, convoked a new assembly of the learned, who declared its use to be not only innocent but healthy; and thus coffee advanced rapidly from the Red Sea and the Nile to Syria, and from Asia Minor to Constantinople, where the first coffee-house was opened in 1554, and soon called forth a number of rival establishments. But here also the zealots began to murmur at the mosques being neglected for the attractions of the ungodly coffee divans, and declaimed against it from the Koran, which positively says that coal is not of the number of things created by God for good. Accordingly the mufti ordered the coffee-houses to be closed; but his successor declaring coffee not to be coal, unless when over-roasted, they were allowed to re-open, and ever since the most pious mussulman drinks his coffee without any scruples of conscience. The commercial intercourse with the Levant could not fail to make Europe acquainted with this new source of enjoyment. In 1652, Pasquia, a Greek, opened the first coffee-house in London, and twenty years later the first French cafés were established in Paris and Marseilles.
As the demand for coffee continually increased, the small province of Yemen, the only country which at that time supplied the market, could no longer produce a sufficient quantity, and the high price of the article naturally prompted the European governments to introduce the cultivation of so valuable a plant into their colonies. The islands of Mauritius and Bourbon took the lead in 1718, and Batavia followed in 1723. Some years before, a few plants had been sent to Amsterdam, one of which found its way to Marly, where it was multiplied by seeds. Captain Descleux, a French naval officer, took some of these young coffee-plants with him to Martinique, desirous of adding a new source of wealth to the resources of the colony. The passage was very tedious and stormy; water began to fail, and all the gods seemed to conspire against the introduction of the coffee-tree into the New World. But Descleux patiently endured the extremity of thirst that his tender shoots might not droop for want of water, and succeeded in safely bringing over one single plant, the parent stock whence all the vast coffee-plantations of America are said to have derived their origin.
On examining the present state of coffee-production throughout the world, we find that the European markets obtain their chief supplies from Brazil, Java, Ceylon, and the West Indies; but with regard to quality, Mocha coffee, though comparatively insignificant in point of quantity, is still prominent in flavour and aroma.