1769 MATTING, ETC. 153 
the water, and dip the cloth into it. The wood of the root 
is no doubt furnished in some degree with the same property 
as the bark, but not having any vessels in which they can 
boil it, it is useless to the inhabitants. The genus of 
Morinda seems worthy of being examined as to its properties 
for dyeing. Browne, in his History of Jamaica, mentions 
three species whose roots, he says, are used to dye a brown 
colour; and Rumphius says of his Bancudus angustifolia, 
which is very nearly allied to our nono, that it is used by 
the inhabitants of the East Indian Islands as a fixing drug 
for the colour of red, with which he says it particularly 
agrees. 
They also dye yellow with the fruit of a tree called 
tamanu (Calophyllum inophyllum), but their method I never 
had the fortune to see. It seems, however, to be chiefly 
esteemed by them for the smell, more agreeable to an Indian 
than an European nose, which it gives to the cloth. 
Besides their cloth, the women make several kinds of 
matting, which serves them to sleep upon, the finest being 
also used for clothes. With this last they take great pains, 
especially with that sort which is made of the bark of the 
poorou (Hibiscus tiliaceus), of which I have seen matting 
almost as fine as coarse cloth. But the most beautiful sort, 
vanne, which is white and extremely glossy and shining, is 
made of the leaves of the wharra, a sort of Pandanus, of 
which we had not an opportunity of seeing either flowers 
or fruit. The rest of their moeas, which are used to sit down 
or sleep upon, are made of a variety of sorts of rushes, grasses, 
etc.; these they are extremely nimble in making, as indeed 
they are of everything which is plaited, including baskets of 
a thousand different patterns, some being very neat. As 
for occasional baskets or panniers made of a cocoanut leaf, 
or the little bonnets of the same material which they wear 
to shade their eyes from the sun, every one knows how to 
make them at once. As soon as the sun was pretty high, 
the women who had been with us since morning, generally 
sent out for cocoanut leaves, of which they made such 
1 Bancudus angustifolia, Rumph. = Morinda angustifolia, Roxb. 
