Читать книгу Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate - Charles M. Skinner - Страница 13

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Had any Dutchman been charged with intending a kindness to the dons when his country was smarting under the Spanish scourge he would have offered the life of some distant relative to disprove the accusation. Without a guess that he could be injuring his own land and enriching that of his enemy, an innocent magistrate of Amsterdam did that for which he would afterward have submitted to the abuse of his friends, and if sackcloth and ashes had been in vogue he would have worn them. It all came about through his wish to be pleasant to a Frenchman, the same being Louis XIV. He sent to this monarch a curiosity in the form of a young coffee-tree, thinking, no doubt, that a warm corner could be found for it in the Jardin des Plantes among the orchids and cacti, and little recking that Louis had a Spanish father-in-law. At that time Holland enjoyed, in her colonies, almost a monopoly of the coffee trade of the world, but that one little tree broke her monopoly, just as one little leak in her dikes led to the eating away of miles of earthen wall and an in-rush and devastation of the sea.

For Louis was more clever than some other kings, almost clever enough to have been in trade, or else he had smart advisers. He had slips cut from the coffee tree, and ere many moons had passed a promising dozen of young plants were ready for shipment to Martinique, the new French colony in the Antilles. A botanist was sent in charge of them, it being the purpose of Louis to turn the island into a coffee plantation and be free of obligation to Holland. The voyage was long, because of head winds and storms, and the precious plants were in peril. Long before the American shores were reached the water supply had run low, and there was much suffering; yet the loyal botanist gave up half of his daily allowance in order that his coffee-trees should live. Salt water would have killed them, and in those days ships had no distilling apparatus. Martinique was reached in safety, however, the little trees struck their roots into congenial soil, and thus the seeds, such as first yielded their aroma to a surprised and gratified Abyssinian chief more than a thousand years before, now spring from the strong earth of the Western world. Whether Spaniards stole some of these trees, or bought them, or whether they got away by accident, certes, they reached Porto Rico, and so became a source of pleasure and profit to people whom the Dutchman did not have in mind when he made his little gift to King Louis. It is believed that all the coffee raised in Batavia for the Dutch also grew from a handful of seeds that had been sent from Arabia to Java. And, oh, that ever the time should have come when France had to buy coffee from her own plant in Porto Rico, and send to that same island for logwood to make claret with—the kind she sells to New York for bohemian tables d’hote!