Joseph Banks's Descriptions of Places, South Sea Islands, page 134

Page 134

Joseph Banks's Descriptions of Places

South Sea Islands

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South Sea Islands (continued)

dye and squeesing them dry again until they have sufficiently extracted all their virtue, when they throw away the remaining leaves keeping however the Möoo which serves them instead of a brush to lay the colour upon the Cloth. The receptacle usd for the liquid dye is constantly a Plantain leaf, whether from any property it may have agreable to the colour, or the great ease with which they are always got and the facility of dividing one and making of it many small cups in which the dye may be distributed to every one in company I do not know. Their method of laying it on the Cloth is this: they take it up in the fibres of the Möoo and rubbing that gently over the Cloth spread the outside of it with a thin coat of dye. This of the thick cloth, the thin they very seldom dye more than the edges of; some indeed I have seen dyed through as if it had been soakd in the dye, but had not near so elegant a colour as that on which a thin coat only was laid on the outside.

Though the Etou leaf is the most generaly usd and I beleive produces the finest colour, yet there are several more which being mixd with the Juice of the little figs produce a red colour, as Tournefortia Sericea which they call Taheinoo; Convolvulus brasilienis,

Voyaging Accounts

© Derived from State Library of NSW Transcription of Banks's Journal page (vol.1) 379, February 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-banks_remarks-134.html