Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/210

152 sometimes inclined to believe that they even borrow the dye of each other, merely for the purpose of colouring their fingers. Whether it is esteemed as a beauty, or a mark of their housewifery in being able to dye, or of their riches in having cloth to dye, I know not.

Of what use this preparation may be to my countrymen, either in itself, or in any tints which may be drawn from an admixture of vegetable substances so totally different from anything of the kind that is practised in Europe, I am not enough versed in chemistry to be able to guess. I must, however, hope that it will be of some value. The latent qualities of vegetables have already furnished our most valuable dyes. No one from an inspection of the plants could guess that any colour was hidden in the herbs of indigo, woad, dyer's weed, or indeed most of the plants whose leaves are used in dyeing: and yet those latent qualities have, when discovered, produced colours without which our dyers could hardly maintain their trade.

The painter whom I have with me tells me that the nearest imitation of the colour that he could make would be by mixing together verniilion and carmine, but even thus he could not equal the delicacy, though his would be a body colour, and the Indian's only a stain. In the way that the Indians use it, I cannot say much for its lasting; they commonly keep their cloth white up to the very time it is to be used, and then dye it, as if conscious that it would soon fade. I have, however, used cloth dyed with it myself for a fortnight or three weeks, in which time it has very little altered, and by that time the cloth itself was pretty well worn out. I have now some also in chests, which a month ago when I looked into them had very little changed their colour: the admixture of fixing drugs would, however, certainly not a little conduce to its keeping.

Their yellow, though a good colour, has certainly no particular excellence to recommend it in which it is superior to our known yellows. It is made of the bark of a root of a shrub called nono (Morinda umbellata). This they scrape into water, and after it has soaked a sufficient time, strain