CHAPTER XX

CULTIVATION OF THE COFFEE PLANT

_The early days of coffee culture in Abyssinia and Arabia--Coffee cultivation in general--Soil, climate, rainfall, altitude, propagation, preparing the plantation, shade and wind breaks, fertilizing, pruning, catch crops, pests, and diseases--How coffee is grown around the world--Cultivation in all the principal producing countries_

For the beginnings of coffee culture we must go back to the Arabian colony of Harar in Abyssinia, for here it was, about the fifteenth century, that the Arabs, having found the plant growing wild in the Abyssinian highlands, first gave it intensive cultivation. The complete story of the early cultivation of coffee in the old and new worlds is told in