About 1628, Sir Thomas Herbert (1606-1681), English traveler and writer, records among his observations on the Persians that: "They drink above all the rest _Coho_ or _Copha_: by Turk and Arab called _Caphe_ and _Cahua_: a drink imitating that in the Stigian lake, black, thick, and bitter: destrain'd from _Bunchy_, _Bunnu_, or Bay berries; wholesome, they say, if hot, for it expels melancholy ... but not so much regarded for those good properties, as from a Romance that it was invented and brew'd by Gabriel ... to restore the decayed radical Moysture of kind hearted Mahomet."[55] In 1634, Sir Henry Blount (1602-82), sometimes referred to as "the father of the English coffee house," made a journey on a Venetian galley into the Levant. He was invited to drink _cauphe_ in the presence of Amurath IV; and later, in Egypt, he tells of being served the beverage again "in a porcelaine dish". This is how he describes the drink in Turkey:[56] They have another drink not good at meat, called _Cauphe_, made of a _Berry_ as big as a small _Bean_, dried in a Furnace, and beat to Pouder, of a Soot-colour, in taste a little bitterish, that they seeth and drink as hot as may be endured: It is good all hours of the day, but especially morning and evening, when to that purpose, they entertain themselves two or three hours in _Cauphe-houses_, which in all Turkey abound more than _Inns_ and _Ale-houses_ with us; it is thought to be the old black broth used so much by the _Lacedemonians_, and dryeth ill Humours in the stomach, comforteth the Brain, never causeth Drunkenness or any other Surfeit, and is a harmless entertainment of good Fellowship; for there upon Scaffolds half a yard high, and covered with Mats, they sit Cross-leg'd after the _Turkish_ manner, many times two or three hundred together, talking, and likely with some poor musick passing up and down. [Illustration: FIRST PRINTED REFERENCE TO "COFFEE" IN ENGLISH, IN ITS MODERN FORM, 1601 Photographed from the black-letter original of W. Parry's book in the Worth Library of the British Museum] This reference to the Lacedaemonian black broth, first by Sandys, then by Burton, again by Blount, and concurred in by James Howell (1595-1666), the first historiographer royal, gave rise to considerable controversy among Englishmen of letters in later years. It is, of course, a gratuitous speculation. The black broth of the Lacedaemonians was "pork, cooked in blood and seasoned with salt and vinegar.[57]" [Illustration: REFERENCES TO COFFEE AS FOUND IN BIDDULPH'S TRAVELS 1609 From the black-letter original in the British Museum]