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HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
The chief occupation of importance that remains to be 
noticed, is the manufacture of cloth. This is, next to the 
cultivation of rice, perhaps the most general employment 
of the people. Woven cloth is made from silk, cotton, 
hemp, and the leaves of the rofia. A still coarser cloth is 
made from the bark of a tree by simply beating it out with 
a wooden mallet, in a manner similar to that in which cloth 
is made by many of the inhabitants of the Asiatic or 
Malayan archipelago, and the islands of the South Sea. 
Spinning and weaving are regarded in Madagascar as 
the appropriate employment of the females, and their 
manner of performing, appears to a European exceedingly 
tedious; but time with them is not a matter of much consi¬ 
deration. The materials are cleaned and pulled by the 
hand, instead of being carded. The only implement 
employed in spinning yarn or thread is a spindle, which 
is used in the following manner:—Holding the ampela or 
spindle in the right hand, and twisting the thread, which is 
drawn out from a piece of carded cotton, held in the left, 
they pull out a thread as long as the two hands can be 
separated. This they wind up around the ampela, and 
then repeat the operation till the spindle is filled. One 
woman with the ampela is not able to spin more than a 
fourth of the quantity that would be produced with a wheel 
in the same time. Much time is therefore required for 
spinning a sufficient quantity to make a piece of cloth five 
yards long. Threads made by slitting the long inner leaves 
of the rofia resemble those of flax or hemp, but as they sel¬ 
dom exceed three or four feet in length, the natives are 
accustomed to tie them together, till they are sufficiently 
long to admit of being woven into cloth. The cloth is 
always woven in the house in which the family reside, and 
the loom is generally fixed near the door. 
