150 GENERAL ACCOUNT OF SOUTH SEA ISLANDS CH. vn 



cannot avoid being taken notice of by the most superficial 

 observer. This colour is made by the admixture of the 

 juices of two vegetables, neither of which in their separate 

 state have the least tendency to the colour of red, nor, so 

 far at least as I have been able to observe, are there any 

 circumstances relating to them from whence any one would 

 be led to conclude that the red colour was at all latent in 

 them. The plants are Ficus tinctoria, called by them matte 

 (the same name as the colour), and Cordia Sebestena, called 

 etou : of these, the fruits of the first, and the leaves of the 

 second, are used in the following manner. 



The fruit, which is about as large as a rounceval pea, or 

 very small gooseberry, produces, by breaking off the stalk 

 close to it, one drop of a milky liquor resembling the juice 

 of a fig-tree in Europe. Indeed, the tree itself is a kind 

 of wild fig. This liquor the women collect, breaking off the 

 foot-stalk, and shaking the drop which hangs to the little 

 fig into a small quantity of cocoanut water. To sufficiently 

 prepare a gill of cocoanut water will require three or four 

 quarts of the little figs, though I never could observe that 

 they had any rule in deciding the proportion, except by 

 observing the cocoanut water, which should be of the colour 

 of whey, when a sufficient quantity of the juice of the little 

 figs was mixed with it. When this liquor is ready, the 

 leaves of the etou are brought and well wetted in it ; they 

 are then laid upon a plantain leaf, and the women begin, at 

 first gently, to turn and shake them about ; afterwards, as 

 they grow more and more flaccid by this operation, to squeeze 

 them a little, increasing the pressure gradually. All this is 

 done merely to prevent the leaves from breaking. As they 

 become more flaccid and spongy, they supply them with 

 more of the juice, and in about five minutes the colour 

 begins to appear on the veins of the etou leaves, and in ten, 

 or a little more, all is finished and ready for straining, when 

 they press and squeeze the leaves as hard as they possibly 

 can. For straining they have a large quantity of the fibres 

 of a kind of Cyperus grass (Cyperus stupeus) called by them 

 mooo, which the boys prepare very nimbly by drawing the 



