96 
VOYAGE TO THE 
The tee-plant is very extensively cultivated. Its leaves, which are 
broad and oblong, are the common food of hogs and goats, and serve 
the natives for wrappers in their cooking. The root affords a very 
saccharine liquor, resembhng molasses, which is obtained by baking in 
the ground ; it requires two or three years after it is planted to 
arrive at the proper size for use, being then about two inches and a 
half in diameter ; it is long, fusiform, and beset with fibres : from this 
root they also make a tea, which w'hen flavoured with ginger is not 
unpleasant. The doodoe is a large tree, with a handsome blossom, and 
supplies ornaments for the ears and hair, and nuts containing a con- 
siderable quantity of oil, which, by being strung upon sticks, serve the 
purpose of candles. The porou and fowtoo are trees which supply them 
with fishing-lines, rope, and cord of all sorts. 'J'he tree is stripped of 
the bark while the sap is in full circulation, and dried ; a fibrous sub- 
stance is then procured from it, which is twisted for use ; but it is not 
strong, and is very perishable. 
The cloth-tree is preeiuinently useful ; and here, as in all places 
in the South Seas where it grows, supplies the natives with clothing. 
I'he manner in which the cloth is manufactured has been frequently 
desciibed, and needs no lepetition. J here is, however, a fashion in the 
heater, some preferring a broad, others a very closely ribbed garment ; 
, for w^hich purpose they have several of these instruments with large 
and small grooves. If the cloth is required to be brown, the inner bark 
of which the cloth is made is wrapped in banana leaves, and put aside 
for about four days ; it is then beaten into a thick doughy substance, 
and again left till fermentation is about to take place, when it is taken 
out, and finally beat into a garment both lengthwise and across. The 
colour thus produced is of a deep reddish brown hue. The pieces are 
generally sufficiently large to wrap round the whole body, but they are 
sometimes divided. 
The toonena is a large tree, from which their houses and canoes 
are made. It is a hard, heavy, red-coloured wood, and grows on the 
upper parts of the island. There was formerly a great abundance of 
this wood, but it is now become so scarce as to require considerable 
search and labour to find sufficient to construct a house. 'J he young 
