seventy-four paces. Joined to this is a sort of circus, whose diameter
is thirty paces, and not above a foot or two higher than the causeway
that joins it, with some trees planted in the middle. On the opposite
side, another causeway of the same sort descends; but this is not above
forty paces long, and is partly in ruin. The whole is built with large
coral stones, with earth on the surface, which is quite overgrown with
low trees and shrubs; and, from its decaying in several places, seems to
be of no modern date. Whatever may have been its use formerly, it seems
to be of none now; and all that we could learn of it from the natives
was, that it belonged to Poulaho, and is called _Etchee_.

On the 16th, in the morning, after visiting the several works now
carrying on ashore, Mr Gore and I took a walk into the country; in the
course of which nothing remarkable appeared, but our having
opportunities of seeing the whole process of making cloth, which is the
principal manufacture of these islands, as well as of many others in
this ocean. In the narrative of my first voyage, a minute description is
given of this operation, as performed at Otaheite; but the process,
here, differing in some particulars, it may be worth while to give the
following account of it:

The manufacturers, who are females, take the slender stalks or trunks of
the paper-mulberry, which they cultivate for that purpose, and which
seldom grow more than six or seven feet in height, and about four
fingers in thickness. From these they strip the bark, and scrape off
the outer rind with a muscle-shell. The bark is then rolled up, to take
off the convexity which it had round the stalk, and macerated in water
for some time (they say, a night). After this, it is laid across the
trunk of a small tree squared, and beaten with a square wooden
instrument, about a foot long, full of coarse grooves on all sides; but,
sometimes, with one that is plain. According to the size of the bark, a
piece is soon produced; but the operation is often repeated by another
hand, or it is folded several times, and beat longer, which seems rather
intended to close than to divide its texture. When this is sufficiently
effected, it is spread out to dry; the pieces being from four to six, or
more, feet in length, and half as broad. They are then given to another
person, who joins the pieces, by smearing part of them over with the
viscous juice of a berry, called _tooo_, which serves as a