Popular Treatise on Tea - Its Qualities and Effects #252620

Arabian merchant, who wrote an account of his travels about the year ad. 850. The Chinese legend relates That a pious hermit who, in his watchings and prayers, had often been overtaken by sleep, so that his eyelids closed; in holy wrath against the weakness of the flesh, cut them off and threw them on the ground. But a god caused a tea shrub to spring out of them; the leaves of which exhibit the form of an eyelid bordered with lashes, and possess the gift of hindering sleep. A similar story is related concerning the introduction of Coffee into Arabia. Both legends were, probably, invented long after the qualities of Tea and Coffee were known.