Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/211

1769 the water, and dip the cloth into it. The wood of the root is no doubt furnished in some degree with the same property as the bark, but not having any vessels in which they can boil it, it is useless to the inhabitants. The genus of Morinda seems worthy of being examined as to its properties for dyeing. Browne, in his History of Jamaica, mentions three species whose roots, he says, are used to dye a brown colour; and Rumphius says of his Bancudus angustifolia, which is very nearly allied to our nono, that it is used by the inhabitants of the East Indian Islands as a fixing drug for the colour of red, with which he says it particularly agrees.

They also dye yellow with the fruit of a tree called tamanu (Calophyllum inophyllum), but their method I never had the fortune to see. It seems, however, to be chiefly esteemed by them for the smell, more agreeable to an Indian than an European nose, which it gives to the cloth.

Besides their cloth, the women make several kinds of matting, which serves them to sleep upon, the finest being also used for clothes. With this last they take great pains, especially with that sort which is made of the bark of the poorou (Hibiscus tiliaceus), of which I have seen matting almost as fine as coarse cloth. But the most beautiful sort, vanne, which is white and extremely glossy and shining, is made of the leaves of the wharra, a sort of Pandanus, of which we had not an opportunity of seeing either flowers or fruit. The rest of their moeas, which are used to sit down or sleep upon, are made of a variety of sorts of rushes, grasses, etc.; these they are extremely nimble in making, as indeed they are of everything which is plaited, including baskets of a thousand different patterns, some being very neat. As for occasional baskets or panniers made of a cocoanut leaf, or the little bonnets of the same material which they wear to shade their eyes from the sun, every one knows how to make them at once. As soon as the sun was pretty high, the women who had been with us since morning, generally sent out for cocoanut leaves, of which they made such