4 Ka Han a Kapa. 



than in the devices the living brain had thought out to improve the arts of living. 

 If the scientific knowledge and methods of today had existed fifty years ago ! 

 What I have done in this treatise is arranged as follows : 



1. The historj' of the art and its geographical distribution: a chapter which 

 should be very full, for it extends its view through the tropical Pacific, through the 

 Indian Ocean to Madagascar (a Polynesian connedlion), into Africa. I have reason 

 to believe that in Central America the art was known, but at the advent of the 

 Spanish Conquistadores the looms were everywhere at work and the earlier fabric 

 forgotten as clothing, although still used as paper on which to inscribe those bril- 

 liant hieroglyphic records, which were so generally destroyed by the invading priests. 

 Japan is at present making fine paper (of which I have specimens) from the same 

 material and in much the same way as the Polvnesians made kapa. 



2. The tools and their uses. Our museums have preserved a fairly complete 

 series of almost all, and the use is without much difficulty interpreted by past experi- 

 ence with actual workers. This will be our largest and most important chapter. 



3. The materials used: and here our path is not wholly clear, for we know 

 only in a general wa}^ some of the trees used in Africa and elsewhere. Even the 

 original home of the chief tree used through China, Japan and all Polj-nesia, the 

 Paper-IMulberr}-, has not been determined; wherever it was used it is found cultivated, 

 or escaped from cultivation. The dves and other coloring matter are often disguised 

 in native names now unidentifiable; and the known materials do not alwaj'S under 

 present treatment yield the results seen on old kapa. We know the substances at 

 their command in the ancient days, but not always the exact treatment. 



4. The uses of kapa as clothing and for the innumerable subsidiary uses. 



5. Hawaiian ornamentation as shown on kapa, in which each reader may 

 decide the provenance and interpretation of the designs laid before him. 



6. A detailed catalogue of the Museum colledlion of kapa and of va.y private 

 collection, that the reader may know that this treatise has not been compiled without 

 due foundation. 



In all this I shall endeavor to put the object or design as fully as possible 

 before the reader by photograph. I shall avoid theorizing as far as may be, bearing 

 always in mind that the main object of this volume is to preserve the fast vanishing 

 art of kapa-making so far as it may prove possible. 



