COFFEE PRODUCTION
Of the American coffees Rio constitutes about half the world's product. After sorting, the larger beans are often marketed as Java coffee, and when the beans have been roasted it is exceedingly difficult to tell the difference. The best Maracaibo is regarded as choice coffee, but its flavor is not liked by all coffee-drinkers. The best Honduras and Puerto Rico coffees take a high rank and command very high prices, retailing in some instances at sixty cents per pound. A very choice peaberry is grown in the volcanic soils of Mexico to which the name of Oaxaca is given; most of it is sold in the United States as a choice Mocha.
Mocha is the commercial name of a coffee at one time marketed in the Arabian city of that name. Since the completion of the Suez Canal, Hodeida has been the chief centre of the Arabian coffee-trade. Formerly most of this coffee was grown in the Province of Yemen, but now it is brought to Hodeida, from Egypt, Ceylon, and India.
About all the product is hand-sorted. The choicest is sold in Constantinople, Cairo, and other cities near by, in some instances bringing five dollars per pound. Very little, and only that of the most inferior quality, ever finds its way into western Europe or the United States. Even the best Mocha is not superior to fine Oaxaca coffee.
Java coffee is renowned the world over for its fine flavor. The best quality was formerly that which had been held in storage to season for a few years. The government coffee was generally the better, but some of the private plantations crop is now equally good. Some of the Sumatra coffees are equal to the best Java beans.
The Liberia coffees have never been favorites in the United States on account of their flavor. In Europe they are used for blending with other varieties.
Of the entire coffee-crop of the world, the United States consumes more than three-quarters of a billion pounds—a yearly average of very nearly eleven pounds for each inhabitant. This is nearly three times as much per inhabitant as is consumed in Germany, and almost fifteen times the average used in Great Britain. Nearly all the world's crop is consumed in the United States and western Europe.
Chicory, parched grain, pease, and burnt parsnip are sometimes added as adulterants to ground coffee. Of those, chicory most nearly resembles coffee in flavor and taste. It is harmless and usually improves the flavor of inferior coffee. A tariff recently placed upon chicory has somewhat lessened the use of it.
Tea.—The tea of commerce consists of the dried and prepared leaves of an evergreen shrub (Thea chinensis) belonging most probably to the camellia family. Tea has been a commercial product of China for more than fourteen hundred years, but seems to have been carried thither from India about five hundred years before the Christian era; for its virtues were praised by (the probably mythical) Chinung, an emperor of that period.
The cultivated plants are scarcely higher than bushes, but the wild plant found in India is a tree fifteen or twenty feet in height. The cultivated plant is quite hardy; severe winters kill it but ordinary freezing weather merely retards its growth. It thrives best in red, mouldy soils; the choicest varieties are grown in new soils. The leaves are not picked until the plants are three or four years old.