our among these people, which, considering the want
of metal for tools, do honour to both.

Their principal manufacture is their cloth, in the making and dyeing of
which I think there are some particulars which may instruct even the
artificers of Great Britain, and for that reason my description will be
more minute.

Their cloth is of three kinds; and it is made of the bark of three
different trees, the Chinese paper mulberry, the bread-fruit tree, and
the tree which resembles the wild fig-tree of the West Indies.

The finest and whitest is made of the paper mulberry, _Aouta_; this is
worn chiefly by the principal people, and when it is dyed red takes a
better colour. A second sort, inferior in whiteness and softness, is
made of the bread-fruit tree, _Ooroo_, and worn chiefly by the interior
people; and a third of the tree that resembles the fig, which is coarse
and harsh, and of the colour of the darkest brown paper: This, though it
is less pleasing both to the eye and to the touch, is the most valuable,
because it resists water, which the other two sorts will not. Of this,
which is the most rare as well as the most useful, the greater part is
perfumed, and worn by the chiefs as a morning dress.

All these trees are propagated with great care, particularly the
mulberry, which covers the largest part of the cultivated land, and is
not fit for use after two or three years growth, when it is about six or
eight feet high, and somewhat thicker than a man's thumb; its excellence
is to be thin, straight, tall, and without branches: The lower leaves,
therefore, are carefully plucked off, with their germs, as often as
there is any appearance of their producing a branch.

But though the cloth made of these three trees is different, it is all
manufactured in the same manner; I shall, therefore, describe the
process only in the fine sort, that is made of the mulberry.[17] When
the trees are of a proper size, they are drawn up, and stripped of their
branches, after which the roots and tops are cut off; the bark of these
rods being then slit up longitudinally is easily drawn off, and, when a
proper quantity has been procured, it is carried down to some running
water, in which it is deposited to soak, and secured from floating away
by heavy stones: When it is supposed to be sufficiently softened, the
women servants go down to the brook, and stripping themselves, sit down
in the water, to separate the inner bark from the green bar