CHAP. VI. 
SOFIA CLOTH. — NATIVE BASKETS. 
151 
loom extremely simple; the process is laborious and slow. At 
other times I have seen the people, as I passed through the 
villages, arranging the threads for their warp, under the shade 
of overspreading trees outside their dwellings. 
The coloured patterns of finer cloths are produced by dying 
the threads, not by colouring or printing the cloth after it is 
woven. Hence they resemble what in England are called 
gingham and plaid patterns. These patterns are arranged 
with great exactness and taste, and the colours, almost always 
rich and deep, are much more varied and numerous than 
might be expected, considering the ignorance of chemistry in 
their formation. I saw many articles of dress, such as cloaks, 
coats, jackets, and waistcoats, made of rofia cloth, both in 
Madagascar and Mauritius, and was surprised at the fresh¬ 
ness of the colours even in the oldest cloths. 
Native baskets of various sizes and materials were also 
brought to me for sale. Some of these were oblong, like a 
lady’s work-box in size, and generally woven in a neat pattern 
of red and white, or with the addition of black. Others were 
smaller and square, covered with a lid to which a handle was 
attached in a curious manner. But the most beautiful was a 
small kind of basket or woven box, made of a silvery white 
kind of grass split into very fine threads or strips, plaited 
with extreme neatness, and almost endless diversity of beau¬ 
tiful pattern. These boxes are oblong or square, and vary in 
size from half an inch to two, three, or nine inches square. 
Nothing can surpass the delicacy of the workmanship of these 
articles, in which, like the mats, there is no careless joining, 
loose thread, or unfinished part to be found. What renders 
them more remarkable is that they are all, even the smallest, 
lined with a different kind of plait, so that they have the 
same firmness, durability, and general completeness as the 
matting. Without losing anything of this, they are many of 
them so small as scarcely to contain a lady’s ring, and cer-* 
