, consumed 48,513,821 pounds. Portugal, in 1919, imported
6,926,575 pounds; and exported 1,258,271 pounds, leaving 5,668,304
pounds for home consumption. Coffee is not especially popular in the
Balkan States and Italy; importations into the last-named country in
1920 amounting to 66,494,925 pounds net. Switzerland is a steady coffee
drinker, consuming 31,535,260 pounds in 1921. Russia was never fond of
coffee; and her total imports in 1917, according to a compilation made
under Soviet auspices, were only 4,464,000 pounds.

[Illustration: A MEETING OF THE COFFEE BROKERS OF AMSTERDAM, 1820

Reproduced from an old print]

OTHER COUNTRIES. The Union of South Africa, in 1920, imported 27,798,000
pounds net, or about 3.8 pounds per capita. Cuba purchased 39,981,696
pounds in the fiscal year 1920; Argentina, 37,541,000 pounds in 1919;
Chile, 12,358,000 pounds in 1920; Australia, 2,239,000 pounds in 1920;
and New Zealand, 283,633 pounds in that year.

_Three Centuries of Coffee Trading_

The story of the development of the world's coffee trade is a story of
about three centuries. When Columbus sailed for the new world, the
coffee plant was unknown even as near its original home as his native
Italy. In its probable birthplace in southern Abyssinia, the natives had
enjoyed its use for a long time, and it had spread to southwestern
Arabia; but the Mediterranean knew nothing of it until after the
beginning of the sixteenth century. It then crept slowly along the coast
of Asia Minor, through Syria, Damascus, and Aleppo, until it reached
Constantinople about 1554. It became very popular; coffee houses were
opened, and the first of many controversies arose. But coffee made its
way against all opposition, and soon was firmly established in Turkish
territory.

In those deliberate times, the next step westward, from Asia to Europe,
was not taken for more than fifty years. In general, its introduction
and establishment in Europe occupied the whole of the seventeenth
century.

The greatest pioneering work in coffee trading was done by the
Netherlands East India Company, which began operations in 1602. The
enterprise not only promoted the spread of coffee growing in two
hemispheres; but it was active also in introducing the sale of the
product in many European countries.

Coffee reached Venice about 1615, and Marseilles about 1644. The French
began importing coffee in commercial quantities in 1660. The Dutch began
to import Moch