CHIEF WOMEN EXCEL IN CLOTH-MAKING. 185 
a distance, in some of the retired valleys, indicat¬ 
ing the abode of industry and peace; but in the 
cloth-houses it is hardly possible to endure it. 
As the wives and daughters of the chiefs take a 
pride in manufacturing superior cloth, the queen 
would often have felt it derogatory to her rank, if 
any other females in the island could have finished 
a piece of cloth better than herself. I remember, 
in the island of Huahine, when a native once 
passed by, wearing a beautiful ahufara, hearing 
one native woman remark to another—What a 
finely printed shawl that is ! The figures on it are 
like the work, or the marking, of the queen! This 
desire, among persons in high stations, to excel in 
departments of labour, is what we have always 
admired. This feeling probably led Pomare to 
bestow so much attention on his hand-writing, and 
induced the king of the Sandwich Islands to 
request that we would not teach any of the people 
till we had fully instructed him in reading and 
writing. 
The ahu, or cloth made with the bark of a tree, 
although exceedingly perishable when compared 
with European woven cloth, yet furnished, while it 
lasted, a light and loose dress, adapted to the 
climate, and the habits of the people. The dura¬ 
tion of a Tahitian dress depended upon the mate¬ 
rials with which it was made, the aoa being con¬ 
sidered the strongest. Only the highly varnished 
kinds were proof against wet. The beauty of the 
various kinds of painted cloth was soon marred, 
and the texture destroyed, by the rain, as they 
were kept together simply by the adhesion of the 
interwoven fibres of the bark. Notwithstanding 
this, a tiputa, or a good strong pareu, when 
preserved from wet, would last several months. 
