Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/204

146 third, which is by far the rarest, is made a coarse, harsh cloth of the colour of the deepest brown paper: it is the only one they have that at all resists water, and is much valued; most of it is perfumed and used by the very great people as a morning dress. These three trees are cultivated with much care, especially the former, which covers the largest part of their cultivated land. Young plants of one or two years' growth only are used; their great merit is that they are thin, straight, tall, and without branches; to prevent the growth of these last they pluck off with great care all the lower leaves and their germs, as often as there is any appearance of a tendency to produce branches.

Their method of manufacturing the bark is the same for all the sorts: one description of it will therefore be sufficient. The thin cloth they make thus: when the trees have grown to a sufficient size they are drawn up, and the roots and tops cut off and stripped of their leaves; the best of the aouta are in this state about three or four feet long and as thick as a man's finger, but the ooroo are considerably larger. The bark of these rods is then slit up longitudinally, and in this manner drawn off the stick; when all are stripped, the bark is carried to some brook or running water, into which it is laid to soak with stones upon it, and in this situation it remains some days. When sufficiently soaked the women servants go down to the river, and stripping themselves, sit down in the water and scrape the pieces of bark, holding them against a flat smooth board, with the shell called by the English shell merchants Tiger's tongue (Tellina gargadia), dipping it continually in the water until all the outer green bark is rubbed and washed away, and nothing remains but the very fine fibres of the inner bark. This work is generally finished in the afternoon: in the evening the pieces are spread out upon plantain leaves, and in doing this I suppose there is some difficulty, as the mistress of the family generally presides over the operation. All that I could observe was that they laid them in two or three layers, and seemed very careful to make them every-