BARK-CLOTH MANUFACTURE. 15 
and various other islands, and has never been intro- 
duced into our gardens, where it would be a great orna- 
ment, nor did any of my specimens survive being taken 
out of their native soil. 
Mr. Fletcher showed us over the town, famous as the 
first spot in Fiji where Christianity was triumphant and 
a printing-press established. The church, constructed 
in native fashion, is a fine substantial building, capable 
of holding about two hundred and fifty people. On the 
open place before it was spread out one of the largest 
pieces of native bark-cloth I have ever seen, being about 
one hundred feet long and twenty feet wide. This was 
the only cloth worn before the recent introduction of 
cotton fabrics. Considering that it was manufactured 
without the aid of any machinery, simply by peeling the 
bark of the paper-mulberry, when the tree is scarcely 
thicker than a little finger, and then soaking and beat- 
ing the different pieces in such a way that they expand 
and all join together in one large mass, the piece was 
well deserving to be examined. But perhaps the most 
curious fact is that not only did the Fijians, as indeed 
most Polynesians, know how to make such cloth, but 
they also printed it in many different colours and pat- 
terns, probably exercising the art of printing ages be- 
fore Guttenberg, Coster, or whoever else may lay claim 
to its invention in Europe, were dreamt of. Was it of 
endemic growth, or did the Fijians derive it in some 
way from China, where it seems to have been practised 
from time immemorial ? 
Not far from the church was the tomb of a departed 
chief, a series of slabs placed perpendicularly and forming 
