e history of coffee in Mysore, we find that there is no
official record of either plant or planting further back than the year
1822, which is not very surprising, as it was only placed under British
rule in 1831; but tradition in these cases seldom fails to supply some
story which is suitable enough, and it may after all be quite true that,
as reported, a Mussulman pilgrim, about two hundred years ago, returned
from Arabia with seven beans which he planted round his mutt (temple) on
the Bababudan hills in the northern part of Mysore, near which some very
old trees may still be seen, and that from these beans all the coffee in
Mysore has descended. But, though the plant may have been introduced at
this early period, I think it improbable that anything in the shape of
plantations existed before about the close of the last century. And,
though the plant has been known for such a number of years, it is not a
little remarkable that coffee has only come into use by the natives who
grow it in recent years, and when I first settled in Mysore, in 1856, I
was repeatedly asked by the farmers of the country whether we ate the
berry, and of what use it could possibly be. And even now, from all that I
can learn, coffee is rarely used by the natives in the coffee growing
districts, though I am informed that it is so to a considerable extent in
the towns of the province.

I have alluded to the tradition of coffee being first introduced into
Mysore by a Mussulman pilgrim about two hundred years ago, and the species
of coffee that was introduced then, or at some subsequent period, was the
only one known in Mysore when I entered the province in 1855. This plant
was finally called the "Chick" variety of coffee, and the name was taken,
I believe, from the town of Chickmaglur, which lies close to the original
Mysore home of the coffee plant. This variety had thriven well and
promised to do so for an indefinite period of time, but towards the end of
1866, and during the three succeeding years, we had dry hot seasons, which
caused a general attack of the Borer insect, and at about the same time
there occurred a general decline in the constitution of the trees, which,
though no doubt greatly hastened in the majority of instances by the
Borer, of which the reader will find a particular account in a subsequent
chapter, has never been explained, and so serious was this decline that,
had we been dependent wholly on the original Mysore variety, it is