Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1911-03-05

Doubtless our wild land roadsdes and pastures still hold
angels, whom with scant hospitality we entertain una
wares Only when they rise to honor shall recognize
them The coffee plant belonging to the great order OF
Rubacee with its fortyve hundred species OF flower
ing plants, shrub unnot1ced tor ages. Blushng
and wasting its sweetness the desert some
unnamed benefactor of the human discovered the
virtue of its nutlets. From them, by roasting and
crushing, he concocted brew that tor halt thousand
years has cheeTed millions.
As with tea and thousand other vegetable blessings,
the drinking of coffee developed through religious
fervor In China the Taosts search for the elixir of
life led to the discovery of tea In Arabia among the
pilgrims to the Mecca shrine of Mahomet the drinking
of qahwe became habit. This grew in spite of all the
fuinatons of holy and reverend teachers of the law
and interpreters of the Koran. Reaching Europe, the
seed taken thence to the five continents usually by
missionaries who the shutes that weave the worlds
girdle
Brazil owes her mighty wealth in coffee to Father
Velaso, a Franciscan monk who planted two coffee
seeds in the garden of the monastery of Saint Anthony
at Rio de Janelro, IN 1854, whence the plants spread
over the vast country.
Where and How 1t Grows
TT is only on the worlds wastband that the starry,
white coffee flower blooms. Only between the fifteenth
degrees north and south of the equator the tree be
successfully grown and those attitudes which be-
tween the three and five thousand feet mark Left by
ITSELF the plant will grow to tree twenty-five feet in
altitude but, not usually two yardstcks
high the bearing shrubs are kept by pruning under
maximum height of ten feet that they can be easily
handled.
The seeds are thickly sown in the nursery; but as
babyhood has passed and the tender sprouts
are able bear breath of wind changes of empera
ture they ransplanted into orchards. They
pretty far apart that while young and not yet bear
ing the soil may be utilized with parallel rows of corn,
bananas, or plantain thrifty shrub grows berries
when three years old, and continues to bear during
twenty years from three to six pounds of beans. Its
glossy green leaves remind of the laurel and the
fragrant, white, fve-petaled fowers-the perfume
ryng in different countries and localities in clus
ters of from three ten each in the axis of the
branches Well regulated streams of water through
the orchard to usty growth but when the ber
ries begin rpen the turned off lest the fruit
be too succulent. The twin beans nutlets ripen
within of pulp that looks like dark red cherry,
or in tint and size rather like cranberry. This pulp
when perfectly ripe is delicious to the taste; but when
dried it is taken off either by hand usually the
case in present day operations in Brazil, by most
modern machinery.
The world now drinks million tons of coffee
year, of which Brazil supplies two-thirds, of
the orchards having five million trees. Indeed Sac
Paulo in Brazil may be called coffee city, since
it owes its rise and existence to the coffee trade.
Brazil has larger coffee bearing than any other
country