So far it simply answers to calico. If gorgeous apparel or handsome furniture is required, it has next to be converted into painted _tappa_, and this is the prettiest part of the process, and requires considerable taste and skill. The patterns produced are exceedingly rich and handsome, generally in shades of brown, sometimes with black or deep red. I have seen pieces imported from Samoa in which a great deal of yellow is introduced; but though the Samoan cloth is much stronger, it is less tasteful. To sketch the design, the artist arranges thin strips of bamboo upon a convex board, and between them the pattern is indicated by curved bits of the midrib of a cocoa-nut leaf. The cloth is laid over this board and rubbed with a dye, which displays the pattern below, and thus the ground-work is prepared. Then the borders are very elaborately painted by a sort of stencil-work, the pattern being cut out of a banana leaf, heated over the fire, and laid on the _masi_. Then with a soft pad of cloth, dipped either in vegetable charcoal and water, or red earth liquefied with the sap of the candle-nut tree, or any other dye that takes her fancy, the artist does her work with deft neat fingers. I have succeeded in buying several small pieces of very beautiful design. The larger ones are generally being made by the order of some chief, or for some especial festivity. Another process which I have watched with considerable interest is that of the girls preparing _mandrai_, which is bread made of bananas and bread-fruit. A Fijian baker’s oven is simply a pit lined with plantain leaves and filled with bananas or bread-fruit, on which the girls tread to compress them into a pulpy mass: this they then cover with a thick layer of green leaves and stones, and leave it to ferment, a process which begins about the third day. The indescribable stench which poisons the air for half-a-mile round on the day when these dreadful pits are opened is simply intolerable,—at least to the uneducated nose of us, the _papalangi_ (_i.e._, foreigners); but the Fijian inhales it with delight, therein scenting the bread and puddings in which he most delights.