[Illustration: THE FIRST PRINTED REFERENCE TO COFFEE, AS IT APPEARS IN
RAUWOLF'S WORK, 1582]

CHAPTER IV

INTRODUCTION OF COFFEE INTO WESTERN EUROPE

_When the three great temperance beverages, cocoa, tea, and coffee,
came to Europe--Coffee first mentioned by Rauwolf in 1582--Early
days of coffee in Italy--How Pope Clement VIII baptized it and made
it a truly Christian beverage--The first European coffee house, in
Venice, 1645--The famous Caffe Florian--Other celebrated Venetian
coffee houses of the eighteenth century--The romantic story of
Pedrocchi, the poor lemonade-vender, who built the most beautiful
coffee house in the world_

Of the world's three great temperance beverages, cocoa, tea, and coffee,
cocoa was the first to be introduced into Europe, in 1528, by the
Spanish. It was nearly a century later, in 1610, that the Dutch brought
tea to Europe. Venetian traders introduced coffee into Europe in 1615.

Europe's first knowledge of coffee was brought by travelers returning
from the Far East and the Levant. Leonhard Rauwolf started on his famous
journey into the Eastern countries from Marseilles in September, 1573,
having left his home in Augsburg, the 18th of the preceding May. He
reached Aleppo in November, 1573; and returned to Augsburg, February 12,
1576. He was the first European to mention coffee; and to him also
belongs the honor of being the first to refer to the beverage in print.

Rauwolf was not only a doctor of medicine and a botanist of great
renown, but also official physician to the town of Augsburg. When he
spoke, it was as one having authority. The first printed reference to
coffee appears as _chaube_ in chapter viii of _Rauwolf's Travels_, which
deals with the manners and customs of the city of Aleppo. The exact
passage is reproduced herewith as it appears in the original German
edition of Rauwolf published at Frankfort and Lauingen in 1582-83. The
translation is as follows:

If you have a mind to eat something or to drink other liquors,
there is commonly an open shop near it, where you sit down upon the
ground or carpets and drink together. Among the rest they have a
very good drink, by them called _Chaube_ [coffee] that is almost as
black as ink, and very good in illness, chiefly that of the
stomach; of this they drink in the morning early in open places
before everybody, without any fear or regard, out of