40 



Ka Hana Kapa. 



There is a traveler from whom I am glad to quote, as he was in the Pacific at 

 the verj- time that I was watching the last embers of the Hawaiian kapa mannfadtnre, 

 the late Julius L. Brenchle}-, a man who spent more than thirt}- ^-ears of his life in wan- 

 dering among peoples who were supposed to be living the "simple life" and his observa- 

 tions have been published in part, but not to the extent that would have been desirable. 

 As a guest on a British man-of-war he had cruised about the western Pacific and to 

 the islands forming the southeastern portion of Polj-nesia, and in this latter region he 

 notices the bark-cloth making. "The Tutuilans are less intelligent, industrious, and 

 skilful in whatever they undertake than the people of Niiie, whose tapa cloths are 

 certainly better finished.""' 



Fig. 17. .K FRAGMK.NT oF TAl'A BROl GUT liV COUK FKO.M To.NC ATAllU. 



While the Curagoa was at Vavau of the Tongan group, among the makers of 

 good cloth, he notes (/. r., p. 92.): — "The people of Neifu and the neighborhood 

 appeared to me ver}- orderly- and industrious. On all sides was to be heard the sound 

 of the mallets used in making tapa, which, far from being disagreeable to me, had 

 something as it were musical in its hollow tone. I obtained some particulars respect- 

 ing the mode of preparing this fabric; the bark employed is never more than two 

 inches wide; small, narrow strips are first manufadlured and then glued together by 

 means of arrow root, so as to form pieces of any length or width desired." 



It is a little curious that while the advent of foreigners with their woven fabrics 

 has driven the beautiful native work out of existence everywhere in eastern-Polynesia 

 except on Samoa, there the foreign desire for curious things has kept alive a rather 



'Brenchley, Cruise of H. M. S. Curajoa among the South Sea Islands in 1865. London, 1873. p. 57. 



