The first coffee-house or café was established in Constantinople early in the sixteenth century, and its popularity was such as to arouse the hostility of the priesthood, who saw in the attractions of the café a serious menace to the attendances at the mosque. Thus that which according to legend had originated as an aid to worship, came to be regarded as an enemy to devotion, and a bitter feeling was aroused which persisted for many years. For a century the habit was almost exclusively practised by the Orientals, but in the middle of the seventeenth century it spread to France and England. In the year 1652 a coffee-house was opened in London, in St. Michael’s Alley, Cornhill, and was the forerunner of many rival establishments that quickly opened throughout the capital. These houses came to be frequented more particularly by the political and literary circles of the day, and in the reign of Charles II a royal proclamation was issued against coffee-shops, alleging them to be the rendezvous of disaffected persons; but this was not such an effective check upon the spread of the habit as was the imposition of a heavy tax upon the article. It is remarkable that although coffee, tea, and cocoa were all introduced into Europe about the same time, the preference for tea in England has been as steady as the predilection for coffee in France. Until the end of the seventeenth century the chief source of the coffee supply was Arabia, but in 1690 the plant was introduced into Java by the Dutch, who also placed one specimen in the Botanical Gardens at Amsterdam as a curiosity, from which plant seeds were afterwards planted in Dutch Guiana. Indeed, from this one plant at Amsterdam the coffee plantations of the New World may be said to have sprung. The islands of the Caribbean Sea were soon supplied with seeds, and plantations were laid out in many localities, which experience proved were the most favourable for the production of the best crops. It is uncertain how the coffee plant came to be introduced into Brazil. One story is that a runaway from Cayenne took a few seeds to Para or Maranhão, somewhere about the year 1761, and that some years later two or three plants were conveyed from there to the city of Rio de Janeiro, where they were cultivated in a private garden, probably by way of a novelty. Even at the beginning of the nineteenth century the cultivation of coffee was not looked upon by the Brazilians as deserving of any serious attention, and they had not much use themselves, except as medicine, for the beverage which to-day is hardly ever out of their mouths.