e
young buds of the coffee tree, and rolling them on a copper plate
slightly heated. In Uganda, the natives eat the raw berries; from
bananas and coffee they make also a sweet, savory drink which is called
_menghai_.

About 1200, the practise was common of making a decoction from the dried
hulls alone. There followed the discovery that roasting improved the
flavor. Even today, this drink known as Sultan or Sultana coffee, _cafe
a la sultane_, or _kisher_, continues in favor in Arabia. Credit for the
invention of this beverage has been wrongfully given by various French
writers to Doctor Andry, director of the Faculty of Medicine in Paris.
Dr. Andry had his own recipe for making _cafe a la sultane_, which was
to boil the coffee hulls for half an hour. This gave a lemon-colored
liquid which was drunk with a little sugar.

[Illustration: EARLY COFFEE MAKING IN PERSIA

Showing leather bag for green beans, roasting plate, grinder, boiler,
and serving cups]

The Oriental procedure was to toast the hulls in an earthenware pot over
a charcoal fire, mixing in with them a small quantity of the silver
skins, and turning them over until they were slightly parched. The hulls
and silver skins, in proportions of four to one, were then thrown into
boiling water and well boiled again for at least a half-hour. The color
of the drink had some resemblance to the best English beer, La Roque
assures us, and it required no sweetening, "there being no bitterness to
correct." This was still the coffee drink of the court of Yemen, and of
people of distinction in the Levant, when La Roque and his
fellow-travelers made their celebrated voyage to Arabia the Happy in
1711-13.

Some time in the thirteenth century, the practise began of roasting the
dried beans, after the hulling process. This was done first in crude
stone and earthenware trays, and later on metal plates, as described in
chapter XXXIV. A liquor was made from boiling the whole roasted beans.
The next step was to pound the roasted beans to a powder with a mortar
and pestle; and the decoction was then made by throwing the powder into
boiling water, the drink being swallowed in its entirety, grounds and
all. It was a decoction for the next four centuries.

When the long-handled Arabian metal boiler made its appearance in the
early part of the sixteenth century, the method of preparation and
service had much improved. The Arabs and the Turks had made it a social
adjunct, and its us