50 Ka Hana Kapa. 



adds little to what former travelers have told. He had touched at Pitcairn and Tahiti 

 on his voyage, and is now on Oahu. 



"The primitive cloth, kapa^ is 3'et very commonly maunfadlured at this island. 

 It is here prepared from the bark of the mai?iaki\ and from that of the ivaiiti^ or paper- 

 mulberry tree. It is generall}' inferior to that prepared at the Society Islands, but no 

 Polynesian nation surpasses the Sandwich Islanders in the gaudy colours and compli- 

 cated patterns they communicate to this fabric. The colours they chiefly emplo}- are 

 red, derived from vegetables, as well as from an ochreous earth ; 3'ellow from the root of 

 the ludian-mulberrj- [noni], and from a second vegetable dye which gives a peculiarlj' 

 bright amber-colour; black, from the carbonaceous residue of burned candle-nuts ; and 

 a delicate green-yellow, from an infusion of the flowers of the cotton plant ;'" a peculiar 

 diill-gray, or slate colour, is also produced, by immersing the cloth in the black miid 

 of the taro fields. The mordants they use to fix these colours are the oil of the caudle- 

 nut, and the astringent water of the taro patches [?]. The more intricate patterns 

 are impressed upon the cloth with carved bamboos, in a manner analogous to that in 

 which European wood-cuts are executed." ^° 



Before leaving the Ellis account of the Hawaiian kapa work I am inclined to turn 

 to the same writer's account of the Tahitian Tapa making, — it will be remembered 

 that Mr. Ellis was a missionary in the southern group before coming to Hawaii, — and 

 compare, even at the cost of some repetition, the similar work of the Tahitians. 

 A part of the account might properlj- be relegated to the chapter on the uses of Tapa, 

 but it is perhaps best to give the storj- as the author told it, as the manufadlure and 

 use are so closelv intertwined in his narrative. 



"The dress of the sexes differed but little; both wore the /a/r?/, or folds of 

 cloth, round the waist. The men, however, wore the malo or girdle, and the tipiita or 

 poncho, while the females wore over their shoulders the light a/iupn or a/in/tapoiio, in 

 the form of a vest, or loose scarf or shawl. 



" Next to those kinds of labour necessar)' to obtain their subsistence, and con- 

 struct their dwellings, their apparel claimed attention. This, though light, required, 

 from the simple methods by which it was fabricated, a considerable portion of their 

 time. Cloth made with the bark of a tree, constituted a principal article of native 

 dress, prior to the introduction of foreign cloth. It is manufadlured chiefl}' by females, 

 and was one of their most frequent employments. The name for cloth, among the 

 Tahitians, is a/ni. The Sandwich Island word fapa is, we believe, never used in this 

 sense, but signifies a part of the human body. In the manufadlure of their cloth, the 



^'Probably mao {Abuiilo>i infumiin); see chapter on the raw material used. 



*" Narrative of a Whaling Voyage round the globe, from the year 1833 to 1836. London, 1.S40. Vol. i, p. 216. 



