1769 CLOTH MANUFACTURE 145 
seen in Europe, though their time is certainly much more 
simple. This exercise is, however, left off as they arrive at 
years of maturity. 
The great facility with which these people have always pro- 
cured the necessaries of life may very reasonably be thought 
to have originally sunk them into a kind of indolence, which 
has, as it were, benumbed their inventions, and prevented 
their producing such a variety of arts as might reasonably 
be expected from the approaches they have made in their 
manners to the politeness of the Europeans. To this may 
also be added a fault which is too frequent even among the 
most civilised nations, I mean an invincible attachment to 
the customs which they have learnt from their forefathers. 
These people are in so far excusable, as they derive their 
origin, not from creation, but from an inferior divinity, who 
was herself, with others of equal rank, descended from the 
god, causer of earthquakes. They therefore look upon it as 
a kind of sacrilege to attempt to mend customs which they 
suppose had their origin either among their deities or their 
ancestors, whom they hold as little inferior to the divinities 
themselves. 
They show their greatest ingenuity in marking and dyeing 
cloth; in the description of these operations, especially the 
latter, I shall be rather diffuse, as I am not without hopes 
that my countrymen may receive some advantage, either 
from the articles themselves, or at least by hints derived 
from them. 
The material of which it is made is the internal bark or 
liber of three sorts of trees, the Chinese paper mulberry 
(Morus papyrifera), the bread-fruit tree (Sitodiwm utile’), and 
a tree much resembling the wild fig-tree of the West Indies 
(Ficus prolixa). Of the first, which they name aouta, they 
make the finest and whitest cloth, which is worn chiefly by 
the principal people; it is likewise the most suitable for 
dyeing, especially with red. Of the second, which they call 
ooroo, is made a cloth inferior to the former in whiteness and 
softness, worn chiefly by people of inferior degree. Of the 
1 Artocarpus incisa, Linn. f. 
L 
