Dr. Forstcr at Easter Island. 25 



fruit of a small fig called Matte, Ficus tinctoria, affords a drop or tAvo of milky jiiice 

 when it is broken off from the tree. This juice is carefully gathered, in a clean cup 

 of coconut shell, and after having sufficienc}- of it, the}- soak in it leaves of the E-tou 

 or Cordia, which imbibe the milk}- juice, and soon tinge it of the finest crimson im- 

 aginable: the whole is gently squeezed out and strained throiigh filaments of coco- 

 nuts, and used to d3'e cloth with. Instead of the E-tou, sometimes the leaves of the 

 Tahenno, Tournefortia sericea, are employed, or those of the Pahoda, Convolvulus 

 brasiliensis, or even those of the E-pooa or Solanum repandum : the sole juice of the 

 Mattee affords a yellow colour: but the best yellow d3'e is made of the juice dripping 

 from the peduncles of the Hibiscus punctatus Popnlnetis, or Emeera : the watrj? infu- 

 sion of the root of the E-nono or Morinda citrifolia dyes a fine yellow. Another kind 

 is extracted from the Tamannoo or the Calophj^llum inophyllum, one of the spurges 

 called Epirree Pierree affords a bay brown colour, and the soaked bark of the Tootooe 

 or Aleurites triloba jdelds a giim or resinous substance used by these people for 

 varnishing their brown cloth." 



I shall again qiiote from this little book in the list of kapa specimens. I can- 

 not, of course, assure my readers that these extracts are absolute copies of the original 

 which I have never seen, but I have no doubt that the}^ are essentially correct. When 

 Dr. Forster was at Rapanui (Easter Island), he found the cultivation of the paper- 

 mulberry attended to, as the source of the scanty clothing the natives possessed ; his 

 reference to this, found on page 568 of the first volume of his Observations, is as 

 follows : — 



" Being arrived at the shrubbery which we had in view, we found it was noth- 

 ing but a small plantation of the paper mulberry, of which here, as well as at Tahei- 

 tee, they make their cloth. Its stems were from two to four feet high, and planted in 

 rows, among very high rocks, where the rains had washed a little soil together. In the 

 neighborhood of these we saw some bushes of the Inbtsais popitlitcus, Linn, which is 

 common also in the Societ}?- Isles, where it is one of the numerous plants made use of to 

 dye yellow ; and likewise a viiniosa which is the only shrub that affords the natives 

 sticks for their clubs and pattoo-pattoos, and wood sufficient to patch up a canoe." 



Although Rapanui was by no means a fertile island, nor its then inhabitants a 

 remarkably intelligent people, yet they had a fair qualit}- of cloth. I have a specimen 

 attributed to Rapanui brought back by the Expedition, biit I am inclined to place it 

 to the credit of the Pitcairn islanders, who of course learned the manufadlure of tapa 

 from the Tahitian women carried thither by the nnitineers of the Boitvty. 



