154 PINE-APPLE FIBRE, ETC. 



worked dress. The common coarse sort, used by the natives for making 

 shirts, costs them from four to ten dollars a shirt. The colour of the 

 coarser sorts is not, however, good ; and the high price of the finer descrip- 

 tions prevents it becoming generally a lady's dress ; the inferior sorts 

 . are not much prized, chiefly because of the yellowish tinge of the 

 cloth. The fabric is exceedingly strong, and, I have been informed, rather 

 improves in colour after every successive washing. 



" Pina handkerchiefs and scarfs are in very general use by the Manila 

 ladies, although they are rather expensive ; the price of the former, when 

 of good quality, being from about five to ten pounds sterling each, while for 

 a scarf of average quality and colour about thirty pounds is paid. The 

 coarser descriptions can be had for much less money than the sums men- 

 tioned ; and the finest qualities would cost from three to four times more 

 than the amounts I have set down. Besides the pina there is also a sort of 

 cloth made by the natives called juse (pronounced huse), or siriamaio, 

 which makes very beautiful dresses for ladies. It is manufactured from a 

 thread obtained from the fibres of a particular sort of plantain tree, which 

 is slightly mixed with pine-apple thread ; and the fabric produced from 

 both of these is very beautiful, being fine and transparent, and looking, to 

 the unaccustomed eye, finer than the ordinary sort of pina cloth. It can be 

 made of any pattern, and is generally striped or checked with coloured 

 threads of silk mingled with the other two descriptions. The manufacture 

 of both these articles is carried on to a small extent in the neighbourhood 

 of Manila ; but in the provinces of Yloylo and Camarines the best juse is 

 produced, the price of which is very much lower than pina, as a lady's 

 dress of it may be got at from seven to twenty dollars ; and for the latter 

 amount a very handsome one would be obtained." 



The finer qualities excel in transparent delicacy of thread the finest cambric 

 made. It is, as we have seen, exceedingly costly, and probably from that 

 reason does not find much favour as an article of export. Designs drawn 

 upon paper are placed beneath the pina intended for embroidering, and the 

 outlines are traced upon it with a pencil. It is then stretched out about a 

 foot from the floor, and parallel to it the workmen and women (for both 

 sexes are employed) sit all round, with their legs bent under them, as 

 closely as they can ply the needle ; and as I witnessed the slow laborious 

 process, I was not astonished that a fully embroidered handkerchief, twenty- 

 four inches square, should cost forty dollars. The artificers are kept at work 

 from seven o'clock in the morning till five in the evening, and are only 

 allowed thirty minutes out of the ten hours for relaxation and refreshment. 

 Both sides-of the handkerchief, or whatever the article may be, are embroi- 

 dered alike, and the workmanship is exquisite. Some of the scarfs, &c, 

 submitted to my admiring notice appeared like transparent tablatures, with 

 fio-ures in relief of beautifully sculptured alabaster.* 



The shirts of the civilised Indians (males) are made of the thin grass cloth, 

 a peculiar manufacture of the country, from the fibrous parts of the leaves 



* " Bovings in the Pacific." 



