begins in March and April, and continues during the spring rains. Holes are made at seven or eight feet distance from each other, and a few seeds thrown in; when they are grown to the height of five or six inches all the stems are pulled up, except two or three of the strongest; these are cropped twice before the end of August, and sometimes sooner, according to the planter's judgment. Precaution is the more necessary, as the wood bears no fruit before the period of pruning; and if the shrub were suffered to grow more than four feet high, the crop would not be greater nor the fruit so early gathered. The same method is continued for three years, for so long the shrub may continue, if it cannot conveniently be renewed oftener with the prospect of an advantage that will compensate the trouble. New lands and a western exposure are fittest for it. When the fruit is ripe they burst open with the influencial heat of the sun: the down is separated from the sced by a sort of mill, which, being worked by the motion of a wheel, makes the cotton fall on the one side, and the seed on the other. The seed is reckoned good in disorders of the kidneys and liver, but prejudicial to the head and stomach. They are also esteemed excellent for a cough or difficulty of breathing, and serviceable in the stone and dysentery, for by their lenitive quality they obtund the acrid and exulcerating humours. The oil expressed from the seed removes spots of the skin and cures running sores of the head; the wool, burnt and reduced to powder, is sometimes put into wounds to stop the effusion of blood. The next article in succession is the Coffee-tree; in botany a genus of the pentandria monogynia class of plants, the flower of which consists of a single funnelshaped petal; the tube is cylindrical and slender, many · up times longer than the cup: the limb is plane, being longer than the tube, and divided into five segments of a lanceolated figure, with their edges bent backwards; the fruit is a round berry, with an umbilicated point; the seeds are two, of an elliptico-hemispheric figure, gibbose on one side, plane on the other, and wrapped in a membrane. This beautiful evergreen is a native of Arabia Felix; it generally rises to the height of seven or eight feet, and sometimes twelve, with a trunk from twelve to seventeen or eighteen inches in circumference; it is covered with a grey smooth bark, and shoots out, through the whole length of the stem, a growth of branches, which are always opposite to each other; the leaves resemble those of the bay-tree, and are ranged in the same manner; from the bottom of these spring fragrant white flowers, very nearly resembling those of the jessamine, of which some esteem the coffee-shrub a species; when the flowers fall they leave a small fruit behind, green at first, but reddens as it ripens, and not unlike a hard cherry both in shape and colour; from two to five of these berries grow together on the same part of the twig, each covered with a tegument or husk, enclosed in another tegument which contains two seeds or kernels called coffee. In the month of May the fruit is gathered by shaking the tree, the fruit falling on cloths spread underneath to receive it; it is then laid on mats to dry in the sun, and the outer tegument is crushed by drawing rollers of wood or iron over them, after which the berries are exposed a second time to the sun, and sifted clean for use or sale. The outer teguments are not wasted, for the slaves wash them and make a drink of them, which has a little tartness, and is esteemed pleasing as well as cooling. The trees are propagated by seeds when perfectly ripe, and are disposed of in nurseries, to be transplanted at leisure. A rich mould is required for them, and they thrive best about the bottom of mountains, and on little hills which are moist and shady; but in St. Domingo I have seen artificial canals cut from rivers or springs to conduct, in times of drought, little streams of water to their roots, which is the chief and laborious part of their cultivation. You have no doubt seen an octavo treatise which Dr. Benjamin Mosely, published in London in 1785, on the properties and effects of coffee, and since translated into every language of Europe. It went, I think, through five editions in England; the first three within the space of a few months. To the second edition of that popular dissertation was prefixed a Preface, no less praised for its diction than for the agricultural, commercial, and political remarks contained in it, relative to the subject of the treatise. For a botanical description of it, see an accurate account collected and published in 1774 by Mr. Ellis. The first account we have of it as a beverage is from HOMER in his Odyssey, supposed to be the nerdos which Helen received from an Egyptian lady, and which the immortal bard celebrates as a soother of the mind, in the most eminent state of anger, grief, and misfortune. Some authors ascribe the origin of its use to a Prior of an Arabian monastery, who being informed that the goats sometimes browzing on the tree would keep awake and caper all night long, became curious to prove its virtue, and gave coffee to the monks to prevent their being drowsy, at their nocturnal devotions. Others again refer the invention to the Persians, from whom it was introduced at Aden, in Arabia, by the Dervises of that city, a sort of Mahometan monks, who drank it when they spent the night in prayer. From Aden its influence spread through all Arabia, and was introduced at Constantinople in the reign of Solyman the Great in the year 1554. About an hundred years afterwards it was adopted at London and Paris, It was first introduced to the latter by M. Thevenot, and in the formér by Pasqua, a Greek servant to Mr. Edwards, a Turkey-merchant, in 1652, who first set up the profession of Coffee man. The only thing remarkable in this great and valuable article of commerce, is the opposition it met with in Europe. Some ignorant quacks, or Turkish doctors, declared it to be spirituous, and almost as intoxicating as wine itself, which their law forbids them to drink; but the Mufti, who, it appears, was no enemy to coffee, soon removed the imputation of any vinous quality, and declared it to be a lawful and harmless liquor. Though the drinking of it did not impede their progress to heaven, yet, during the war in Candia, the assemblies of news-mongers making too free with state affairs, the Grand Vizer suppressed the Coffee-houses at Constantinople. This suppression, however, which still continues, does not prevent the use of coffee in that city, but, on the contrary, the practice is general among the Turks. Coffee experienced the very same treatment under CHARLES II. in England, that it met with in Turkey under an AMURETH and a MAHOMEт, because it was found to encourage social meetings in Coffee-houses, which were shut up by proclamation in the year 1675, as seminaries of sedition. Nothing, however, evinces the shallow short-sighted policy of Charles's ministers more than this very act; but, indeed, the leading men in England seem to have had their minds constantly abstracted from the true interest of their country at all times. As for Charles, he pursued measures he secretly condemned, and yielded to counsels which his own heart told him, were equally inconsistent with his honour and the happiness of his people. Bad counsels he embrac'd through indolence, Thro' love of ease, and not thro' want of sense: CHURCHILL. BOERHAVE tells us, that a Dutch Governor having procured some fresh berries from Mocha, planted them in Batavia, and in the year 1690, sent a plant from thence to Amsterdam. In the year 1715 the Dutch began to cultivate coffee in Surinam; the French in Martinique in 1717; and, in the year following, it was cultivated in Jamaica. "How," says Dr. Mosely, it has been propagated since those periods in the "West Indies, and the employment it has given to the industry of people of small capital, a numerous "and necessary body of men; to the increase of commerce, and the population of the colonies, is too well "known to require recital here." However much the medicinal virtues of coffee have been extolled and recommended in a variety of instances, it is very little drank in the British West Indies; a Cracker, as they call it in Jamaica, suits the English palate better*. But the French hold coffee in just estimation. It is drank by them the very first thing in the morning, and again immediately after dinner, taking one cup only each time, instead of a copious libation of Port and Madeira, in which the English indulge * Cracker is a mixture of three equal parts, composed of Rum, Brandy, and Gin. |