152 GENERAL ACCOUNT OF SOUTH SEA ISLANDS CH. vn 



sometimes inclined to believe that they even borrow the 

 dye of each other, merely for the purpose of colouring their 

 fingers. Whether it is esteemed as a beauty, or a mark of 

 their housewifery in being able to dye, or of their riches in 

 having cloth to dye, I know not. 



Of what use this preparation may be to my country- 

 men, either in itself, or in any tints which may be drawn 

 from an admixture of vegetable substances so totally different 

 from anything of the kind that is practised in Europe, I am 

 not enough versed in chemistry to be able to guess. I 

 must, however, hope that it will be of some value. The 

 latent qualities of vegetables have already furnished our 

 most valuable dyes. No one from an inspection of the 

 plants could guess that any colour was hidden in the herbs 

 of indigo, woad, dyer's weed, or indeed most of the plants 

 whose leaves are used in dyeing : and yet those latent qualities 

 have, when discovered, produced colours without which our 

 dyers could hardly maintain their trade. 



The painter whom I have with me tells me that the 

 nearest imitation of the colour that he could make would 

 be by mixing together vermilion and carmine, but even thus 

 he could not equal the delicacy, though his would be a body 

 colour, and the Indian's only a stain. In the way that the 

 Indians use it, I cannot say much for its lasting; they 

 commonly keep their cloth white up to the very time it is 

 to be used, and then dye it, as if conscious that it would 

 soon fade. I have, however, used cloth dyed with it myself 

 for a fortnight or three weeks, in which time it has very 

 little altered, and by that time the cloth itself was pretty 

 well worn out. I have now some also in chests, which a 

 month ago when I looked into them had very little changed 

 their colour : the admixture of fixing drugs would, however, 

 certainly not a little conduce to its keeping. 



Their yellow, though a good colour, has certainly no 

 particular excellence to recommend it in which it is superior 

 to our known yellows. It is made of the bark of a root of 

 a shrub called nono (Morinda umbellata). This they scrape 

 into water, and after it has soaked a sufficient time, strain 



