iB4' ADYENTtmE IN NEW ZEALAND. Chap. XH. 
visit to the Pelorus river, the process pursued by the 
natives. They only use a very thin layer of fibres on 
the inner or glazed side of the leaf, and reject the rest 
as refuse, or use it without further preparation for the 
roughest thatch-mats. And all the inventors, on the 
contrary, aim at separating the pulp from the fibre of 
the whole leaf, and thus produce the fibre cleaned, 
but of mixed quality — that refused together with that 
selected by the natives. 
The attention of most people was now turned to 
the subject of making some use of this plan, evidently 
intended to become a main export of the country. It 
became the fashion to have an " idea " about flax ; and 
I, like the rest, formed one of a party who had theirs. 
This was to proceed on the same general principle as 
the natives ; and, if possible, to discover some more ex- 
peditious way of separating, like them, the best from 
the ordinary part of the leaf. In the meanwhile, it 
seemed feasible to start their manufacture again on a 
large scale, and to send experimental cargoes of the 
raw material, thus roughly prepared, to England, for 
examination and report. 
In order to get the fibre which has undergone the 
first scrape into that clean and silky condition in 
which the natives work it up into mats, they pass it 
through many long and laborious processes. It is soaked 
in water, beaten, and twisted ; and then soaked, and 
beaten, and twisted, and dried, over and over again. 
When only scraped, there still hangs to it a brittle and 
glossy chaff, formed by the drying in the sun of the 
glazed surface of the leaf ; but, by mere hackling, this 
is entirely removed. The scraped fibre loses 12 per 
cent, of its weight in hackling ; and the remaining 88 
per cent, is divided between straight clean fibre and 
tangled tow. As labour is of course much dearer in a 
