Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/209

1769 stalks of it through their teeth, or between two little sticks until all the green bark and the bran-like substance which lies between them is gone. In a covering of these fibres, then, they envelop the leaves, and squeezing or wringing them strongly, express the dye, which turns out very little more in quantity than the liquor employed; this operation they repeat several times, as often soaking the leaves in the dye and squeezing them dry again, until they have sufficiently extracted all their virtue. They throw away the remaining leaves, keeping however the mooo, which serves them instead of a brush to lay the colour on the cloth. The receptacle used for the liquid dye is always a plantain leaf, whether from any property it may have suitable to the colour, or the great ease with which it is always obtained, and the facility of dividing it, and making of it many small cups, in which the dye may be distributed to every one in the company, I do not know. In laying the dye upon the cloth, they take it up in the fibres of the mooo, and rubbing it gently over the cloth, spread the outside of it with a thin coat of dye. This applies to the thick cloth: of the thin they very seldom dye more than the edges; some indeed I have seen dyed through, as if it had been soaked in the dye, but it had not nearly so elegant a colour as that on which a thin coat only was laid on the outside.

Though the etou leaf is the most generally used, and I believe produces the finest colour, yet there are several more, which by being mixed with the juice of the little figs produce a red colour. Such are Tournefortia sericea (which they call taheino), Convolvulus brasiliensis, Solanum latifolium (ebooa). By the use of these different plants or of different proportions of the materials many varieties of the colour are observable among their cloths, some of which are very conspicuously superior to others.

When the women have been employed in dyeing cloth, they industriously preserve the colour upon their fingers and nails, upon which it shows with its greatest beauty; they look upon this as no small ornament, and I have been