ng with the bellows and
arranging the charcoal till a sufficient heat has been produced.
Next he places the largest of the coffee-pots, a huge machine, and
about two-thirds full of clear water, close by the edge of the
glowing coal-pit, that its contents may become gradually warm while
other operations are in progress. He then takes a dirty knotted rag
out of a niche in the wall close by, and having untied it, empties
out of it three or four handfuls of unroasted coffee, the which he
places on a little trencher of platted grass, and picks carefully
out any blackened grains, or other non-homologous substances,
commonly to be found intermixed with the berries when purchased in
gross; then, after much cleansing and shaking, he pours the grain
so cleansed into a large open iron ladle, and places it over the
mouth of the funnel, at the same time blowing the bellows and
stirring the grains gently round and round till they crackle,
redden, and smoke a little, but carefully withdrawing them from the
heat long before they turn black or charred, after the erroneous
fashion of Turkey and Europe; after which he puts them to cool a
moment on the grass platter.

He then sets the warm water in the large coffee-pot over the fire
aperture, that it may be ready boiling at the right moment, and
draws in close between his own trouserless legs a large stone
mortar, with a narrow pit in the middle, just enough to admit the
large stone pestle of a foot long and an inch and a half thick,
which he now takes in hand. Next, pouring the half-roasted berries
into the mortar, he proceeds to pound them, striking right into the
narrow hollow with wonderful dexterity, nor ever missing his blow
till the beans are smashed, but not reduced into powder. He then
scoops them out, now reduced to a sort of coarse reddish grit, very
unlike the fine charcoal dust which passes in some countries for
coffee, and out of which every particle of real aroma has long
since been burnt or ground.

After all these operations, each performed with as intense a
seriousness and deliberate nicety as if the welfare of the entire
Djowf depended on it, he takes a smaller coffee-pot in hand, fills
it more than half with hot water from the larger vessel, and then
shaking the pounded coffee into it, sets i