CHAPTER I. 



HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY. 



We can go back onl}' in imagination to the time when naked man, having to 

 some extent satisfied his hunger, made himself a shelter from the -weather and a pro- 

 tedlion from his fellow man (in the daj-s of the simple life), found to his annoyance 

 that he was naked and had to devise something to remedy the supposed defect. We 

 know that there are tribes that have not 3'et made that unpleasant discover}-, but the 

 missionary will sooner or later make them conscious of their needs, and his brother 

 the trader will supph' them with the loaded fabrics of the Christian countries, and 

 thej' will not have to invent or use bark cloth for clothing. 



China, the mother of so mau}^ arts, made paper from the same material and in 

 essentiall)' the same way as the Pol3'nesians were found making it many centuries 

 after. How the paper-mulberr}^ came into the islands of the Pacific, we do not 

 know and probably never shall. Have we yet learned how Chinese porcelain came 

 into Egyptian tombs of the earl}' dynasties? Their paper was easier to bring and 

 might have suggested to the Eg3'ptian traders who visited the interior of Africa before 

 the daj'S of Solomon, the way to utilize the barks of similar nature found there in 

 abundance. All this gives exercise to the imagination but adds nothing to our 

 knowledge, and we must come centuries later to the log-books of the voyagers, 

 and the journals of the travelers by land who were beginning to learn that the 

 habitable world did not revolve around Jerusalem, or even around the proud Citj- of 

 the Seven Hills. 



It would be quite possible for one placed within reach of a great library to fill 

 many quarto pages with references, more or less obscure, to garments made from tree- 

 bark as well as leaves, that early voyagers found among the peoples they visited, but 

 the value of such a gathering would be problematical and at best would seem an idle 

 display of research such as would be more suitable for a candidate for an academic 

 degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Unfortunately early voyagers did not trouble them- 

 selves to describe carefully domestic manufactures ; their knowledge was limited and 

 seldom extended to a critical understanding of the peoples among whom they made 

 their discoveries. Hence they often misunderstood the supposed answers to mis- 

 understood questions, a frequent occurrence as late as the time of Cook, with whom I 

 propose to begin nij- account of kapa-making. 



When we remember that the fig-leaf which appears in the charming Baby- 

 lonian idyl given in the book of Genesis as the earliest dress of primitive man, still 



figures even in the Vatican and other galleries as the inappropriate garb of statues of 

 ° (5) 



