I have been much interested in watching various native manufactures. In one village called Natheva—_i.e._, the South—the women were making dresses of the streamers of pandanus, brightly dyed, and others were plaiting mats made of tall flags or reeds, which they cut into strips with a sharp shell. In another village I sat in the chief’s house watching the girls rasping sandal-wood with which to powder their hair and scent their hair-oil. One girl held the stick, and another had a large piece of skin of the sting ray-fish, stretched over another stick so rough as to act like a file as she rubbed it over the sandal-wood. There was formerly a considerable amount of this fragrant wood in these isles, but ruthless traders have swept the land so thoroughly, without the slightest thought of sparing young saplings, that now the tree scarcely exists, and the smallest fragment is dearly prized. Wherever we go, we find the women busy preparing native cloth from the bark of the paper mulberry tree, which they take off in long strips and steep in water to make the fibre separate from the green outer bark, which is scraped off with a sharp shell. Then the fibre is laid on a wooden board and beaten with a mallet, which is grooved longitudinally. A strip two inches wide can be beaten out to upwards of a foot in width, when it becomes gauze-like, and is used for festal attire; or else, dyed in burnt sugar and smoke-dried, it is a much-valued covering for the hair. But for general use, two strips of the wet fibre are beaten together, their own gluten causing them to adhere to one another; or if very strong cloth is required, three or even four thicknesses may be used. A number of such pieces are then neatly joined together with a glue made from the _taro_, or from arrowroot, and thus a piece can be made of any size or length required. Sometimes a great roll, a couple of hundred yards long, is prepared for presentation to a chief; or else a double square, twenty feet wide by perhaps thirty or forty in length, to be hung up as mosquito-curtains. The _masi_ at this stage is of a creamy white colour, very becoming to the brown creatures who wear it.