150 GENERAL ACCOUNT OF SOUTH SEA ISLANDS cu. vi 
cannot avoid being taken notice of by the most superficial 
observer. This colour is made by the admixture of the 
juices of two vegetables, neither of which in their separate 
state have the least tendency to the colour of red, nor, so 
far at least as I have been able to observe, are there any 
circumstances relating to them from whence any one would 
be led to conclude that the red colour was at all latent in 
them. The plants are Ficus tinctorta, called by them matte 
(the same name as the colour), and Cordia Sebestena, called 
etou: of these, the fruits of the first, and the leaves of the 
second, are used in the following manner. 
The fruit, which is about as large as a rounceval pea, or 
very small gooseberry, produces, by breaking off the stalk 
close to it, one drop of a milky liquor resembling the juice 
of a fig-tree in Europe. Indeed, the tree itself is a kind 
of wild fig. This liquor the women collect, breaking off the 
foot-stalk, and shaking the drop which hangs to the little 
fig into a small quantity of cocoanut water. To sufficiently 
prepare a gill of cocoanut water will require three or four 
quarts of the little figs, though I never could observe that 
they had any rule in deciding the proportion, except by 
observing the cocoanut water, which should be of the colour 
of whey, when a sufficient quantity of the juice of the little 
figs was mixed with it. When this liquor is ready, the 
leaves of the efow are brought and well wetted in it; they 
are then laid upon a plantain leaf, and the women begin, at 
first gently, to turn and shake them about; afterwards, as 
they grow more and more flaccid by this operation, to squeeze 
them a little, increasing the pressure gradually. All this is 
done merely to prevent the leaves from breaking. As they 
become more flaccid and spongy, they supply them with 
more of the juice, and in about five minutes the colour 
begins to appear on the veins of the etow leaves, and in ten, 
or a little more, all is finished and ready for straining, when 
they press and squeeze the leaves as hard as they possibly 
can. For straining they have a large quantity of the fibres 
of a kind of Cyperus grass (Cyperus stupeus) called by them 
mooo, which the boys prepare very nimbly by drawing the 
