152 GENERAL ACCOUNT OF SOUTH SEA ISLANDS cu. vu 
sometimes inclined to believe that they even borrow the 
dye of each other, merely for the purpose of colouring their 
fingers. Whether it is esteemed as a beauty, or a mark of 
their housewifery in being able to dye, or of their riches in 
having cloth to dye, I know not. 
Of what use this preparation may be to my country- 
men, either in itself, or in any tints which may be drawn 
from an admixture of vegetable substances so totally different 
from anything of the kind that is practised in Europe, I am 
not enough versed in chemistry to be able to guess. I 
must, however, hope that it will be of some value. The 
latent qualities of vegetables have already furnished our 
most valuable dyes. No one from an inspection of the 
plants could guess that any colour was hidden in the herbs 
of indigo, woad, dyer’s weed, or indeed most of the plants 
whose leaves are used in dyeing: and yet those latent qualities 
have, when discovered, produced colours without which our 
dyers could hardly maintain their trade. 
The painter whom I have with me tells me that the 
nearest imitation of the colour that he could make would 
be by mixing together vermilion and carmine, but even thus 
he could not equal the delicacy, though his would be a body 
colour, and the Indian’s only a stain. In the way that the 
Indians use it, I cannot say much for its lasting; they 
commonly keep their cloth white up to the very time it is 
to be used, and then dye it, as if conscious that it would 
soon fade. I have, however, used cloth dyed with it myself 
for a fortnight or three weeks, in which time it has very 
little altered, and by that time the cloth itself was pretty 
well worn out. I have now some also in chests, which a 
month ago when I looked into them had very little changed 
their colour: the admixture of fixing drugs would, however, 
certainly not a little conduce to its keeping. 
Their yellow, though a good colour, has certainly no 
particular excellence to recommend it in which it is superior 
to our known yellows. It is made of the bark of a root of 
a shrub called nono (Morinda wmbellata). This they scrape 
into water, and after it has soaked a sufficient time, strain 
