The culture of coffee is principally carried on in Yemen, towards the districts of Aden and Mocha. The nearest coffee plantations are about eighty miles from Aden.
The coffee-growing country in the Yemen is 300 miles to the south of Jeddah, being the districts about Tohira, Uodeida, and Tanaa. Of this, the Turks have but little, their authority only extending over the narrow slip called the Tehana, in which is little coffee. They had till lately the export dues of all the coffee grown in Western Arabia, but they have lost a great part of them, a large quantity of coffee being sent to Aden for exportation. Mocha, the ancient port and capital, has completely fallen, and is in ruins. Its place is taken by Uodeida, the seat of government of the Yemen, and a Pashalic under Jeddah. In 1860, coffee to the value of 14,268_l._ was imported into Aden by sea, of 55,710_l._ was brought by land, and 45,344_l._ was exported. An enormous quantity is consumed in Arabia. Very little genuine Yemen coffee is procurable in Europe. It is difficult to obtain even in Jeddah. It is first mixed in the Yemen with inferior Abyssinian coffee, then mixed at Jeddah with damaged coffee, and probably in Egypt it is again mixed. Alexandria and Cairo are notorious for bad coffee.
It has been understood for several years that much of the coffee which finds its way into England as genuine Mocha is, in reality, Malabar coffee, sent to ports on the Persian Gulf from Bombay, and when thus naturalised, finding its way to Europe. But the coffee of India is now competing successfully with that of Arabia in markets which the latter had for centuries commanded as its own. In a few years the Indian article will entirely surpass the Arabian. It is the old story of enterprise originated and directed by Europeans driving competition out of the market. Seeing that the Arabs are in the habit of baking the cow-dung and cakes for food on the same wall, they cannot be suspected of any violent antipathy to dirt _per se_. But, passionate lovers as they are of a good cup of coffee, they can easily understand that an equal quantity of well-cleaned Malabar coffee is cheaper than that brought in the buggalows of the Nijd Arabs, and which is described as full of extraneous matter, such as pieces of the coffee-husk, &c. But the Indian coffee is actually sold cheaper, quantity for quantity. The consumption of Yemen coffee is now entirely confined to the wealthier chiefs; the finest kind, and that most sought after, being the small, of a light-green colour. Latterly, the Yemen coffee has been all sent to Bagdad, a compliment which the ancient city of the Sultans cannot fail to appreciate at its true value. It is too dear and too dirty for the poor Arabs of Bussorah, while the flavour of the Malabar kind is found closely to approximate to that of Yemen.