From Physical Geography
By Mary Somerville, 1854
The earlier history of the C. tree is not very clear. It was not known to the Greeks or Romans; but in Abyssinia and Ethiopia it has been used from time immemorial; and in Arabia it was certainly in use in the 15th c., and over the rest of the east in the 16th century. Towards the end of the 17th c., it was carried from Mocha to Batavia by Wieser, a burgomaster of Amsterdam, where it was soon extensively planted, and at last young plants were sent to the botanical garden at Amsterdam, from which the Paris garden obtained a tree. A layer of this was carried out to Martinique in 1720, where it succeeded so well, that in a few years all the West Indies could be supplied with young trees.
The employment of C. as a beverage was introduced from Arabia, in the 16th c.,into Egypt ana Constantinople. Leonhard Rauwolf, a German physician, was probably the first to make C. known in Europe, by the account of his travels printed in 1573. Soon after the first introduction of C., COFFEE-HOUSES arose almost everywhere. The first in Europe was established in Constantinople in 1551. In London, the first coffeehouse was opened in Newman's court, Cornhill, in 1652, by a Greek named Pasquet. This Greek was the servant of an English merchant named Edwards, who brought some C. with him from Smyrna, and whose house, when the fact became known, was so thronged with friends and visitors to taste the new beverage, that to relieve himself from annoyance, Edwards established his servant in a coffee-house. The first coffee-house in France was opened at Marseilles iu 1671, and in 1672 there was one opened iu Paris, which soon had several competitors.