more and more flaccid, and then they are gently squeezed, gradually increasing the pressure, but so as not to break them; as the flaccidity increases, and they become spungy, they are supplied with more of the liquor; in about five minutes the colour begins to appear upon the veins of the leaves, and in about ten or a little more, they are perfectly saturated with it: They are then squeezed, with as much force as can be applied, and the liquor strained at the same time that it is expressed.

*For this purpose, the boys prepare a large quantity of the Moo, by drawing it between their teeth, or two little sticks, till it is freed from the green bark and the branny substance that lies under it, and a thin web of the fibres only remains; in this the leaves of the Etou are enveloped, and through these the juice which they contain is strained as it is forced out. As the leaves are not succulent, little more juice is. pressed out of them than they have imbibed: When they have been once emptied, they are filled again, and again pressed, till the quality which tinctures the liquor as it passes through them is exhausted; they are then thrown away; but the moo, being deeply stained with the colour, is preserved, as a brush to lay the dye upon the cloth.

The expressed liquor is always received into small cups made of the plantain leaf, whether from a notion that it has any quality favourable to the colour, or from the facility with which it is procured, and the convenience of small vessels to distribute it among the artificers, I do not know.

Of the thin cloth they seldom dye more than the edges, but the thick cloth is coloured through the whole surface; the liquor is indeed used rather as a pigment than a dye, for a coat of it is laid upon one side only, with the fibres of the moo; and though I have seen of the thin cloth that has appeared to have been soaked in the liquor, the colour has not had the same richness and lustre, as when it has been applied in the other manner.

Though the leaf of the etou is generally used in this process, and probably produces the finest colour, yet the juice of the figs will produce a red by a mixture with the species of tournefortia, which they call taheinno, the pohuc, the eurhe, or convolvulus brasiliensis, and a species of solanum called ebooa; from the use of these different plants, or from different proportions of the materials, many varieties are observable

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servable in the colours of their cloth, some of which are conspicuously superior to others.

The beauty, however, of the best, is not permanent; but it is probable that some method might be found to fixit, if proper experiments were made, and perhaps to search for latent qualities, which may be brought out by the mixture of one vegetable juice with another, would not be an unprofitable employment: Our present most valuable dyes afford sufficient encouragement to the attempt; for, by the mere inspection of indigo, woad, dyer's weed, and most of the leaves which are used for the like purposes, the colours which they yield could never be discovered. Of this Indian red I shall only add, that the women who have been employed in preparing or using it, carefully preserve the colour upon their fingers and nails, where it appears in its utmost beauty, as a great ornament.

The yellow is made of the bark of the root of the morinda citrifolia, called nono, by scraping and infusing it in water; after standing some time, the water is strained and used as a dye, the cloth being dipped into it. The morinda, of which this is a species, seems to be a good subject for examination with a view to dyeing. Brown, in his History of Jamaica, mentions three species of it, which he says are used to dye brown; and Rumphius says of the bancuda angustifolia, which is nearly allied to our nono, that it is used by the inhabitants of the East Indian islands as a fixing drug for red colours, with which it particularly agrees.

The inhabitants of this island also dye yellow with the fruit of the tamanu; but how the colour is extracted, we had no opportunity to discover. They have also a preparation with which they dye brown and black; but these colours are so indifferent, that the method of preparing them did not excite our curiosity.

Another considerable manufacture is matting of various kinds; some of which is finer, and better, in every respect, than any we have in Europe; the coarser sort serves them to sleep upon, and the finer to wear in wet weather. With the fine, of which there are also two sorts, much pains is taken, especially with that made of the bark of the poerou, the hibiscus tiliaceus of Linnæus, some of which is as fine as a coarse cloth: The other sort, which is still more beautiful, they call vanne; it is white, glossy, and shining, and is made of the leaves of their wharrou, a species of the pandanus, of which we had no opportunity to see either the flowers or fruit: They have other matts, or, as they call them, moeas, to sit or to sleep upon, which are formed of a great variety of rushes and grass, and which they make, as they do every thing else that is plaited, with amazing facility and dispatch.

They are also very dexterous in making basket and wicker-work; their baskets are of a thousand different patterns, many of them exceedingly neat; and the making them is an art that every one practises, both men and women; they make occasional baskets and panniers of the cocoa-nut leaf in a few minutes, and the women who visited us early in a morning used to send, as soon as the sun was high, for a few of the leaves, of which they made little bonnets to shade their faces, at so small an expence of time and trouble, that, when the sun was again low in the evening, they used to throw them away. These bonnets, however, did not cover the head, but consisted only of a band that went round it, and a shade that projected from the forehead.

Of the bark of the poerou they make ropes and lines, from the thickness of an inch to the size of a small packthread: With these they make nets for fishing. Of the fibres of the cocoa-nut they make thread for fastening together the several parts of their canoes and belts, either round or flat, twisted or plaited; and of the bark of the erowa, a kind of nettle which grows in the mountains, and is therefore rather scarce, they make the best fishing lines in the world; with these they hold the strongest and most active fish, such as bonetas and albicores, which would snap our strongest silk lines in a minute, though they are twice as thick.

They make also a kind of seine, of a coarse broad grass, the blades of which are like flags; these they twist and tie together in a loose manner, till the net, which is about as wide as a large sack, is from sixty to eighty fathoms long; this they haul in shoal smooth water, and its own weight keeps it so close to the ground, that scarcely a single fish can escape.

In every expedient, indeed, for taking fish, they are exceedingly ingenious; they make harpoons of cane, and point them with hard wood, which, in their hands, strike fish more effectually than those which are headed with iron can do in ours, setting aside the advantage of ours being fastened fastened to a line, so that the fish is secured if the hook takes place, though it does not mortally wound him.

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Of fish-hooks they have two sorts, admirably adapted in their construction as well to the purpose they are to answer, as to the materials of which they are made. One of these, which they call witlee wittee, is used for towing. The shank is made of mother-of-pearl, the inost glossy that can be got; the inside, which is naturally the brightest, is put behind. To these hooks a tuft of white dog's or hog's hair is fixed, so as somewhat to resemble the tail of a fish; these implements, therefore, are both hook and bait, and are used with a rod of bainboo, and line oferowa. The fisher, to secure his success, watches the flight of the birds which constantly attend the bonetas when they swim in shoals, by which he directs his canoe, and when he has the advantage of these guides, he seldom returns without a prize.

The other kind of hook is also made of mother-of-pearl, or some other hard shell: They cannot make them bearded like our hooks; but, to effect the same purpose, they make the point turn inwards. These are made of all sizes, and used to catch various kinds of fish with great success. The manner of making them is very simple, and every fisherman is his own artificer: The shell is first cut into square pieces by the edge of another shell, and wrought into a form corresponding with the outline of the hook, by pieces of coral, which are sufficiently rough to perforin the office of a file; a hole is then bored in the middle; the drill being no other than the first stone they pick up that has a sharp corner; this they fix into the end of a piece of bamboo, and turn it between the hands like a chocolate-mill; when the shell. is perforated, and the hole sufficiently wide, a small file of coral is introduced, by the application of which the hook is in a short time completed, few costing the artificer more time than a quarter of an hour.

Of their masonry, carving, and architecture, the reader has already formed some idea from the account that has been given of the morais, or repositories of the dead: The other most important article of building and carving is their boats; and, perhaps, to fabricate one of their principal vessels with their tools, is as great a work as to build a British man-of-war with ours.

They have an adze of stone; a chissel, or gouge, of bone, generally that of a inan's arm between the wrist and elbow; a rasp

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a rasp of coral; and the skin of a sting-ray, with coral sand, as a file or polisher.

This is a complete catalogue of their tools, and with these they build houses, construct canoes, hew stone, and fell, cleave, carve, and polish timber.

The stone which makes the blade of their adzes is a kind of basaltes, of a blackish or grey colour, not very hard, but of considerable toughness: They are formed of different sizes; some, that are intended for felling, weigh from six to eight pounds; others, that are used for carving, not more than so many ounces; but it is necessary to sharpen both almost every minute; for which purpose, a stone and a cocoa-nut shell full of water are always at hand.

Their greatest exploit, to which these tools are less equal than to any other, is felling a tree: This requires many hands, and the constant labour of several days. When it is down, they split it, with the grain, into planks from three to four inches thick, the whole length and breadth of the tree, many of which are eight feet in the girt, and forty to the branches, and nearly of the same thickness throughout. The tree generally used, is, in their language, called avie, the stem of which is tall and straight; though some of the smaller boats are made of the bread-fruit tree, which is a light spongy wood, and easily wrought. They smooth the plank very expeditiously and dexterously with their adzes, and can take off a thin coat from a whole plank without missing a stroke. As they have not the art of warping a plank, every part of the canoe, whether hollow or flat, is shaped by hand.3

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3 One likes to see the exercise of human ingenuity even on trifles. It flatters the consciousness of one's own powers, and affords, too, the ground-work of a comparison nowise disadvantageous to what one believes of his own capabilities. Man has heen defined by a certain writer, an animal that uses instruments for the accomplishment of his purposes. But the definition is faulty in one important point; it does not exclude some beings which are not of the species. It is perhaps impossible to fur. nish an adequate definition of his nature within the compass of a single logical proposition. And what matter? Every man in his senses knows what man is, and can hardly ever be necessitated to clothe his conception of him, in language metaphysically unexceptionable. But if any trait be more characteristic than another, that of invention may safely be asserted to have the pre-eminence. Man, in effect, evinces the superiority of his nature over all other animals, by a faculty which he seems exclusively to enjoy, in common with his Maker, of creating systems, plans, and objects, by the exercise of an understanding and will adapted to certain ends fore