Of course, the coffee-house idea, and the use of coffee in the home, quickly spread to other cities in Great Britain; but all the coffee houses were patterned after the London model. Mol's coffee house at Exeter, Devonshire, which is pictured on page 41, was one of the first coffee houses established in England, and may be regarded as typical of those that sprang up in the provinces. It had previously been a noted club house; and the old hall, beautifully paneled with oak, still displays the arms of noted members. Here Sir Walter Raleigh and congenial friends regaled themselves with smoking tobacco. This was one of the first places where tobacco was smoked in England. It is now an art gallery. When the Bishop of Berytus (Beirut) was on his way to Cochin China in 1666, he reported that the Turks used coffee to correct the indisposition caused in the stomach by the bad water. "This drink," he says, "imitates the effect of wine ... has not an agreeable taste but rather bitter, yet it is much used by these people for the good effects they find therein." In 1686, John Ray (1628-1704), one of the most celebrated of English naturalists, published his _Universal History of Plants_, notable among other things for being the first work of its kind to extol the virtues of coffee in a scientific treatise. R. Bradley, professor of botany at Cambridge, published (1714) _A Short Historical Account of Coffee_, all trace of which appears to be lost. Dr. James Douglas published in London (1727) his _Arbor Yemensis fructum Cofe ferens; or, a description and History of the Coffee Tree_, in which he laid under heavy contribution the Arabian and French writers that had preceded him. [Illustration] CHAPTER VII THE INTRODUCTION OF COFFEE INTO HOLLAND _How the enterprising Dutch traders captured the first world's market for coffee--Activities of the Netherlands East India Company--The first coffee house at the Hague--The first public auction at Amsterdam in 1711, when Java coffee brought forty-seven cents a pound, green_ The Dutch had early knowledge of coffee because of their dealings with the Orient and with the Venetians, and of their nearness to Germany, where Rauwolf first wrote about it in 1582. They were familiar with Alpini's writings on the subject in 1592. Paludanus, in his coffee note on _Linschoten's Travels_, furnished further enlightenment in 1598. The Dutch were always great merchants and shrewd traders. Being of a practical turn of mind, they conceived an ambition to grow coffee in their colonial possessions, so as to make their home markets headquarters for a world's trade in the product. In considering modern coffee-trading, the Netherlands East India Company may be said to be the pioneer, as it established in Java one of the first experimental gardens for coffee cultivation.