Part 1

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COFFEE AND CHICORY:

THEIR

CULTURE, CHEMICAL COMPOSITION, PREPARATION FOR MARKET, AND CONSUMPTION,

WITH

SIMPLE TESTS FOR DETECTING ADULTERATION,

AND

PRACTICAL HINTS FOR THE PRODUCER AND CONSUMER.

BY

P. L. SIMMONDS,

AUTHOR OF “THE COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS OF THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM,” “A DICTIONARY OF TRADE PRODUCTS,” &c.

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS.

LONDON:

E. & F. N. SPON, 16, BUCKLERSBURY.

1864.

PREFACE.

A practical essay on the culture and preparation of coffee for market in the various producing countries of the world, brought down to the present time, has long been wanted, especially as the sources of supply have changed so much of late years. Porter’s “Tropical Agriculturist” has long been out of print, and my own work on “The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom” is too expensive and too diffuse for ordinary reference. The present hand-book deals with the subject in a popular form, but, at the same time, supplies correct information on most points, combined with the fullest descriptive and statistical details respecting every coffee-producing country. For much of the information relating to coffee cultivation in Ceylon, I am indebted to a small treatise by Mr. G. C. Lewis, privately published in that island. For the views of buildings and scenery, I am under obligations to Sir Emerson Tennent and Messrs. Worms, who kindly lent me original drawings and photographs--whilst the microscopic representations of pure and adulterated coffee and chicory are copied, by permission, from Dr. Hassall’s elaborate work on “Food and its Adulterations.” Trusting that this little work may be found useful and interesting to a large class, I send it forth as the pioneer of other hand-books on the great staples of commerce.

P. L. S.

8, Winchester-street, S.W.,

July, 1864.

CONTENTS.

COFFEE.

SECTION I. PAGE

BOTANICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE COFFEE-TREE (with two illustrations) 1

SECTION II.

HISTORY OF ITS INTRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION 6

SECTION III.

PRODUCTION AND SUPPLY 12

SECTION IV.

COMMERCIAL VARIETIES OF COFFEE 15

SECTION V.

CHEMICAL ANALYSES 20

SECTION VI.

COFFEE-LEAF TEA, &C. 27

SECTION VII.

ADULTERANTS (_with an illustration_) 29

SECTION VIII.

CULTURE IN THE WEST INDIES AND AMERICA 34

SECTION IX.

CULTURE IN ARABIA 42

SECTION X.

CULTIVATION IN CEYLON (_with an illustration_) 45

SECTION XI.

BUILDINGS, PLANTING, &C., IN CEYLON (_with four illustrations_) 52

SECTION XII.

HARVESTING THE CROP, AND PREPARATION FOR MARKET (_with an illustration_) 59

SECTION XIII.

PREPARATION FOR MARKET, CONTINUED 63

SECTION XIV.

CULTIVATION IN SOUTHERN INDIA 73

SECTION XV.

BOURBON, JAVA, AND THE EAST 78

SECTION XVI.

COFFEE AS A BEVERAGE 81

CHICORY.

SECTION I.

INTRODUCTION INTO ENGLAND. CONTINENTAL PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION 88

SECTION II.

CULTIVATION. HARVESTING AND PREPARATION FOR MARKET 93

SECTION III.

STRUCTURE AND CHEMICAL COMPOSITION (_with an illustration_) 98

COFFEE AND CHICORY.

COFFEE.

SECTION I.

BOTANICAL DESCRIPTION.

The coffee-tree--_Coffea arabica_, Linn.--is a plant belonging to the natural order _Cinchonaceæ_. It is a large erect bush, quite smooth in every part; leaves oblong lanceolate, acuminate, shining on the upper side, wavy, deep green above, paler below; stipules subulate, undivided. Peduncles axillary, short, clustered; corollas white, funnel-shaped, sweet-scented, with four or five oblong-spreading twisted lobes. Fruit a compressed drupe, furrowed along the side, crowned by the calyx. Seeds solitary, plano-convex, with a deep furrow along the flat side. Putamen like parchment.

The generic name given to the plant by Linnæus was taken, it is said, from Coffee, a province of Narea, in Africa where it grows in abundance.

Plate 1 represents a branch of the coffee-tree in blossom and fruit, and the lettered figures at the foot have reference to the dissection of the flower and fruit.

A--The flower, cut open, to show the situation of the five filaments, with their summits lying upon them.

B--Represents the flower cup, with its four small indentations enclosing the germ or embryo seed-vessel, from the middle of which arises the style, terminated by the two reflexed spongy tops.

C--The fruit entire, marked at the top with a puncture like a navel.

D--The fruit open, to show that it consists ordinarily of two seeds, which are surrounded by the pulp.

E--The fruit cut horizontally, to show the seeds as they are placed erect, with their flat sides, together.

F--One of the seeds taken out, with the membrane or parchment upon it.

G--The same with the parchment torn open, to give a view of the seed.

H--The seed without the parchment.

Lindley and Paxton only enumerate two species: _C. arabica_, native of Yemen, and _C. paniculata_, indigenous to Guiana.

Continental botanists, however, describe no less than eight other species: four inhabiting Peru, _C. microcarpa_, _C. umbellata_, _C. acuminata_, and _C. subsessilis_; two indigenous to the West Coast of Africa, _C. laurina_ and _C. racemosa_; and two natives of the East Indies, _C. bengalensis_ and _C. Indica_. Some of these are probably mere varieties.

Whatever its origin may have been, there can be no doubt that there are three kinds or species now grown, differing materially from each other.

The Arabian or Mocha coffee is characterised by having a small and more brittle leaf, with branches shorter, and more upright than the Jamaica and Ceylon coffee; and by its berry being almost always, or at least very frequently, single seeded, and the seed cylindrical and plump.

The Jamaica coffee-tree has a larger and more pliable leaf, longer and more drooping branches, and berries almost always containing two seeds. (_The Ethiopian._)

The great difference now existing between the two kinds, may possibly have originated in the change of soil, climate, and season, operating through a series of years; but this difference is so decided, and so strongly marked, that the veriest tyro can in a moment pronounce of either.

The East India or Bengal coffee-tree differs much from all others, but is in every respect a veritable coffee.

The leaf is smaller, and lighter green, than the foregoing variety; its berry is infinitely smaller, and when ripening, turns black instead of blood-red. Coffee made from it is of excellent flavour, and much liked.

Within the tropics, coffee thrives best at an elevation of 1200 to 3000 feet, and rarely grows above 6000 feet. It may be cultivated as far as 36° north latitude, where the mean temperature is about 70°.

In the western hemisphere coffee is grown in many of the West India Islands, in Central America, the northern republics of South America, Berbice, Cayenne, and Brazil. In Africa it is grown in Liberia and other parts of Western Africa, at St. Helena, in Egypt, and Mozambique, and a little in Natal. Passing eastward we find it in Arabia, one of the oldest seats of culture, the southern peninsula of India, Ceylon, Bourbon, Java, Célèbes, and other parts of the Eastern Archipelago, Siam, and some of the Pacific Islands.

Coffee-plants are able to bear an amount of cold which is little known or thought of. The high and cold regions of Jamaica near St. Catherine’s Peak, and the foot of the Great Blue Mountain Peak, both situated at some 6000 feet above the level of the sea; and, again, the mountains of Arabia, the Neilgherries, and Ceylon, furnish instances of the great degree of cold that the coffee-plant will endure. More than this, it is an established fact that it bears a larger, plumper, and far more aromatic berry at these altitudes than in a lower situation and in a warmer temperature. The coffee produced on plantations near the foot of the Blue Mountain Peak, in Jamaica, is the finest in the world. In Arabia, likewise, the cold at night is sometimes intense; yet who will dispute the goodness of Mocha coffee?

Nothing can exceed the beauty of the rows or walks planted with coffee-trees, from their pyramidical shape and glossy dark leaves, amongst which are hanging the ripe, scarlet-coloured berries. A writer, in his “Impressions of the West Indies,” thus speaks: “Anything in the way of cultivation more beautiful or more fragrant than a coffee-plantation I had not conceived, and oft did I say to myself that if ever I became, from health or otherwise, a cultivator of the soil within the tropics, I would cultivate the coffee-plant, even though I did so irrespective altogether of the profit that might be derived from so doing. Much has been written, and not without justice, of the rich fragrance of an orange-grove, and at home we ofttimes hear of the sweet odours of a bean-field. I have, too, often enjoyed, in the Carse of Stirling and elsewhere in Scotland, the balmy breezes as they swept over the latter, particularly when the sun had burst out with unusual strength after a shower of rain. I have likewise in Martinique, Santa Cruz, Jamaica, and Cuba, inhaled the breezes wafted from the orangeries, but not for a moment would I compare either with the exquisite aromatic odours from a coffee-plantation in full bloom, when the hill-side--covered over with regular rows of the shrubs, with their millions of jasmine-like flowers--showers down upon you as you ride up between the plants a perfume

of the most delicately delicious description. ’Tis worth going to the West Indies to see the sight and inhale the perfume.”

Plate 2 represents a coffee plantation in Jamaica.

In the culture of the tree there is a singular difference in the western and eastern hemispheres, inasmuch as in the former shade is considered injurious, whilst in the latter it is held to be desirable, if not absolutely necessary.

SECTION II.

HISTORY OF ITS INTRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION.

Coffee, although taking its common and specific names from Arabia, is not a native plant of that country, but of Abyssinia, where it is found both in the wild and cultivated state. From that country it was brought to Arabia, in comparatively very recent times. Mr. Lane states that it was first used there about the year 1450. It was not known to the Arabs, therefore, for more than eight hundred years after the time of Mahomed, and was introduced only between forty and fifty years before the discovery of America. The Arabians called coffee kăhwăh, which is an old word in their language for wine. The unlucky word gave rise to a dispute about the legality of its use among the Mahomedan doctors, who, mistaking the word for the thing it represented, denounced as a narcotic that which was anti-narcotic. They were beaten, and coffee has ever since become a legitimate and favourite potable of the Arabs.

In a century its use spread to Egypt and other parts of the Turkish empire. For two centuries from its introduction into Arabia, the use of coffee seems to have been confined to the Mahomedan nations of Western Asia; and, considering its rapid spread and popularity among the European nations, it is remarkable that it has not, like tobacco, extended to the Hindus, the Hindu-Chinese, the Japanese, or the tribes of the Indian Archipelago, who no more use it than the Europeans do the betel preparation. The high price of coffee and the low cost of tobacco, most likely afford the true solution of the difference. One striking result of the use of coffee first, and then of tobacco, among the Mahomedan nations is well deserving of notice. These commodities have been in a great measure substituted for wine and spirits, which had been largely, although clandestinely, used before, and hence a great improvement in the sobriety of Arabs, Persians, and Turks. I give this interesting fact on the authority of Mr. Lane, who mentions it in the notes to his translation of the Arabian Nights.[1]

From Turkey coffee found its way to Europe. It came in use in England before either tea or chocolate. A Turkey merchant of London, of the name of Edwards, is said to have brought the first bag of coffee to England, and his Greek servant to have made the first dish of English coffee about 1652. But it is stated in the Life of Wood, the antiquary, that “in 1651, one Jacob, a Jew, opened a coffee-house at the Angel, in the parish of St. Peter-in-the-East, Oxon; and there it was, by some who delighted in noveltie, drunk. When he left Oxon, he sold it in Old Southampton-buildings, in Holborne, near London, and was living there in 1671.”

Coffee-houses were soon after opened in various parts of the metropolis, as also in other parts of the kingdom, for vending it. The excise officers visited the coffee-houses at fixed periods, and took an account of the number of gallons of the liquid that were made, upon which a duty of 4d. per gallon was charged until 1689.

Three years after the first introduction of coffee upon the statute books, the increase of houses for its sale had become so great, that by the Act passed in 1663, “For the better ordering and collecting the duty of excise, and preventing the abuses therein” (15 Chas. II., cap. 11, sect. 15), express provision is made for the licensing of all coffee-houses at the quarter sessions, under a penalty of 5_l._ for every month during which any person should retail coffee, chocolate, or tea, without having first procured such license from the magistrates. From that time to the revolution, coffee-houses multiplied so rapidly that, when Ray published his “History of Plants” in 1688, he estimated that the coffee-houses in London were at that time as numerous as in Cairo itself; whilst similar places of accommodation were to be met with in all the principal cities and towns in England.

There are now in London alone more than 1500 coffee-houses, besides confectioners’ shops, and other places where coffee is vended.

For half a century at least Arabia furnished all the coffee that Europe consumed, which, therefore, must have been very trifling. It was, in fact, long the luxury of a few fashionable people, with whom, however, it must have been in general use sixty years after its introduction, as we find from the well-known passage of the “Rape of the Lock,” published in 1712, in which politicians are described as seeing through it “with half-shut eyes.”

Le Grand d’Aussy, in his “Vie Privée des Français,” gives a curious and interesting account of the first introduction of the use of coffee in France. As early as 1658 some merchants of Marseilles introduced the use of coffee into that city, and Thévenot, after his return from his Eastern travels, about the year 1658, regaled his guests with coffee after dinner.

“This, however,” says Le Grand, “was but the eccentricity of a traveller, which would not come into fashion among such a people as the Parisians. To bring coffee into credit, some extraordinary and striking circumstance was necessary. This circumstance occurred on the arrival, in 1669, of an embassy from the Grand Seigneur Mahomet IV. to Louis XIV. Soliman Aga, chief of the mission, having passed six months in the capital, and during his stay having acquired the friendship of the Parisians by some traits of wit and gallantry, several persons of distinction, chiefly women, had the curiosity to visit him at his house. The manner in which he received them not only inspired a wish to renew the visit, but induced others to follow their example. He caused coffee to be served to his guests, according to the custom of his country; for since fashion had introduced the custom of serving this beverage among the Turks, civility demanded that it should be offered to visitors, as well as that those should not decline partaking of it. If a Frenchman, in a similar case, to please the ladies, had presented to them this black and bitter liquor, he would be rendered for ever ridiculous. But the beverage was served by a Turk--a gallant Turk--and this was sufficient to give it inestimable value. Besides, before the palate could judge, the eyes were seduced by the display of elegance and neatness which accompanied it, by those brilliant porcelain cups into which it was poured, by napkins with gold fringes, on which it was served to the ladies; add to this the furniture, the dresses, and the foreign customs, the strangeness of addressing the host through the interpreter, being seated on the ground, on tiles, &c., and you will allow that there was more than enough to turn the heads of French women. Leaving the hotel of the ambassador with an enthusiasm easily imagined, they hastened to their acquaintances, to speak of the coffee of which they had partaken; and Heaven only knows to what a degree they were excited.”

The extravagant price of coffee, notwithstanding that the fashion of drinking it was established, prevented it from coming into general use. It was only to be had, according to Le Grand, at Marseilles, and even there not in any quantity. Labat, quoted by him, states that the price at this time was the enormous one of forty crowns a pound. In 1672, an Armenian opened in Paris the first coffee-house, on the plan of those he had seen at Constantinople. Pascal was followed by a crowd of imitators, whose numbers became so great in 1676, that it was found necessary to form them into a society by statute.

As to the European names of coffee, they are all, observes Mr. Crawfurd, from the same source, the old Arabic word for wine, kăhwăh, which is composed of a very guttural _k_, unpronounceable by Europeans, except by an awkward effort, of the labial _w_, and of two short vowels ă, with an aspirate at the end of each syllable. The Turks have changed the labial _w_ into _v_, and the European nations, who took the word directly from them, have corrupted the word by converting the labial _v_ into the labial _f_, by substituting an ordinary _k_ or hard _c_ for the Arabic guttural, by omitting both the aspirates, and by converting the last short ă into ĕ, or as with ourselves, always the greatest corruptors of orthography, changing both the vowels.

The Mahomedans distinguish three kinds of kăhwăh--wine, or anything that inebriates; the extract from the pulp which contains the coffee-berry; and that from the berry itself. The deep brown colour of the liquor occasioned its being called the syrup of the Indian mulberry, under which specious name it first became fashionable in Europe; and some who imported the pulp called it the “flower of the coffee-tree,” but it failed in use. Coffee is used in vast quantities by the Turks and Arabians, and with peculiar propriety, as it counteracts the narcotic effects of opium, to the use of which they are so much addicted.

The history of the cultivation of coffee by European nations in their colonies is singular. The old Dutch East India Company carried on some traffic with the Arabian ports in the Red Sea; and about the year 1690, the Dutch Governor-General of India, Van Hoorne, caused some ripe coffee-seeds to be brought to Java; they were planted, grew, and produced fruit. He sent a single plant home from. Batavia to Nicholas Witsen, the Governor of the East India Company, which arrived safe, was planted in the Botanic Gardens of Amsterdam, where it prospered, produced fruit, and the fruit young plants. From the Amsterdam garden plants were sent to the Dutch colony of Surinam, and the planters entered on the cultivation of coffee in 1718. The authority for this is the celebrated physician and botanist, Boerhaave, in his Index of the Leyden Garden. In ten years after its cultivation in Surinam it was introduced from that colony by the English into Jamaica. It was sent to Martinique from France in 1720. The first coffee-plant cultivated in Brazil, now the greatest producing country in the world, was reared by a Franciscan monk, of the name of Vellosa, in the garden of the convent of San Antonio, near Rio Janeiro; it throve, and the monk presented its ripe fruit to the viceroy, Lavrado. He judiciously distributed it to the planters, who commenced its cultivation in 1774. From Java the coffee-plant was conveyed to Sumatra, to Célèbes, to the Philippines, and in our own times to Malabar, Mysore, and Ceylon. The few coffee-berries brought from Mocha to Batavia are the parents of the vast quantity now produced, all the coffee now consumed (exceeding 500,000,000 lbs.), save the trifle yielded by Arabia, has the same origin, and the great cultivation and commerce in coffee has all sprung up in less than one hundred and seventy-five years.

SECTION III.

PRODUCTION AND SUPPLY.

The changes in the sources of supply of coffee within the last quarter of a century are very remarkable. The British possessions in the East, where land and labour is cheap, have taken the place which our Western possessions formerly occupied.

The British West India Islands and Demerara have fallen off in their production of coffee from 30,000,000 lbs. to 4,000,000 lbs. San Domingo, Cuba, and the French West India colonies are also gradually giving up coffee culture in favour of other staples. It is chiefly Brazil, some of the Central American republics, Java, Ceylon, and British India, that are able to render coffee a profitable crop.

At the close of the last century the consumption of coffee was under one million pounds; the only descriptions then known in the London market were Grenada, Jamaica, and Mocha--the two former averaging about 5_l._ per cwt., and the latter 20_l._ per cwt. Grenada coffee is now unknown, and Ceylon, Java, and Brazil are the largest producers.

In 1760 the total quantity of coffee consumed in the United Kingdom was 262,000 lbs., or three-quarters of an ounce to each person in the population.

From 1801 to 1804 the average quantity of coffee consumed by each individual of the population was only about 1 oz., whilst 1½ lbs. of tea per head was used. From 1805 to 1809 the consumption of coffee was 3 oz. per head. From 1810 to 1824, when the duty was reduced by about one-third, the consumption was 8 oz. After this, when the duty on British-grown coffee was further reduced to 9d. and 6d. the pound, the consumption rose to 1 lb., and by 1850 to 1½ lbs. But this consumption was not uniform for the United Kingdom, for while in England 1 lb. 12 oz. was used, in Scotland only 6 oz. were consumed, and in Ireland but 2 oz.

The quantities of coffee consumed in Great Britain in each decennial period, comparing the consumption with the growth of the population, and exhibiting the influence of high and low duties, are shown by the following statement. The figures up to 1841 are from Porter’s “Progress of the Nation.” Those since are computed from official documents: