POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
17; 
their houses for bed and window curtains, &c. Several 
kinds of strong cloth are finished with a kind of gum 
or varnish, for the purpose of rendering them imper¬ 
vious. 
But in the fabrication of glazed cloth, the natives 
of the Austral Islands, especially those of Rurutu, 
excel all with whom I am acquainted. Some of the 
pieces of cloth are thirty or forty yards square, ex¬ 
ceedingly thick, and glazed on both sides, resembling 
on the upper side the English oil-cloth table-covers. 
It must have required immense labour to prepare it, yet 
it was abundant when they were first discovered. It is 
usually red on one side, and black on the other, the 
latter being highly varnished with a vegetable gum. 
In the manufacture of cloth, the females of all ranks 
were employed; and the queen, and wives of the 
chiefs of the highest rank, strove to excel in some 
department—in the elegance of the pattern, or the bril¬ 
liancy of the colour. They are fond of society, and 
worked in large parties, in open and temporary houses 
erected for the purpose. Visiting one of these houses at 
Eimeo, I saw sixteen or twenty females all employed. 
The queen sat in the midst, surrounded by several chief 
women, each with a mallet in her hand, beating the bark 
that was spread before her. The queen worked as dili¬ 
gently and cheerfully as any present. 
The spar or square piece of wood on which the 
bark is beaten, being hollow on the under-side, every 
stroke produces a loud sound, and the noise oc¬ 
casioned by sixteen or twenty mallets going at one 
time, was to me almost deafening; while the queen 
and her friends seemed not only insensible to any 
inconvenience from it, but quite amused at its appa¬ 
ll. 2 A 
