Page:Voyages in the Northern Pacific - 1896.djvu/133

Rh dry scurvy. These scales drop off in the order of their formation, from the head, face, neck, and body, and finally leave a beautiful, smooth, clear skin, and the frame clear of all disease:—The process is also held to be a certain cure for venereal infection. I have known many white men go through a course of this powerful medicine. Women are not allowed to use it; and thus, unhappily, the dreadful disease, first brought to these islands by Captain Cook's crew, remains to curse the inhabitants.

The principal employment of the men is tilling the ground, making canoes, spears, etc. The chiefs keep as many followers about them as they can feed and clothe, and when provisions fail with one master, these seek another who is better able to support them. Some are so much attached to their chiefs, that they go off in ships to the N. W. coast of America, and often to China, and, when they return, give all they have earned to their chief, for which he gives them a farm, and they become great men. The old women are employed in making cloth, which is done in the following manner:—they collect a quantity of the bark of the young mulberry-trees, (which are cultivated for that purpose;) they lay it in soak for several days, and then beat it upon a block, which is grooved, or fluted; the stick with which they beat it is also grooved. They beat some as fine as paper, and in this manner they can produce any size, some coarse, and some fine; some they make to stand the water; those are painted in oil colours. The young women rove about without