United States or Italy ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
When the operation last described has been concluded, the new-made tappa is spread out on the grass to bleach and dry, and soon becomes of a dazzling whiteness. Sometimes, in the first stages of the manufacture, the substance is impregnated with a vegetable juice, which gives it a permanent colour.
THERE were some ill-natured people tell-tales it seemed, in Tamai; and hence there was a deal of mystery about getting up the dance. An hour or two before midnight, Rartoo entered the house, and, throwing robes of tappa over us, bade us follow at a distance behind him; and, until out of the village, hood our faces. Keenly alive to the adventure, we obeyed.
Again a beautiful tappa cloth was spread for me, and then ten maidens entered, and, sitting in a semi-circle, began to chew a root called kava, which, when sufficiently masticated, they returned into a calabash, water being poured on the result. Meanwhile, the Prince, dreamily and ever so gently, was rolling some kind of weed between his fingers.
I bought some tappa and mallets, however, with some of the markers used in colouring the cloth, and a few gourds and calabashes, forming part of the household furniture. While the horses were being saddled preparatory to our departure, Mabelle and I went to another cottage close by, to see the mother of the baby that had been born while we were here on Saturday.
We dropped in one evening, and found the ladies at home. My long friend engaged his favourites, the two younger girls, at the game of "Now," or hunting a stone under three piles of tappa. For myself, I lounged on a mat with Ideea the eldest, dallying with her grass fan, and improving my knowledge of Tahitian. The occasion was well adapted to my purpose, and I began.
But the art of printing the tappa is unknown upon the Marquesan Islands. In passing along the valley, I was often attracted by the noise of the mallet, which, when employed in the manufacture of the cloth, produces at every stroke of its hard, heavy wood, a clear, ringing, and musical sound, capable of being heard at a great distance.
The body, neatly wrapped in new white tappa, was laid out in an open shed of cocoa-nut boughs, upon a bier constructed of elastic bamboos ingeniously twisted together. This was supported, about two feet from the ground, by large canes planted uprightly in the earth.
Close by his noon-tide friend, the cascade at the mouth of the grotto, reposed on his crimson mat, Donjalolo: arrayed in a vestment of the finest white tappa of Mardi, figured all over with bright yellow lizards, so curiously stained in the gauze, that he seemed overrun, as with golden mice. Marjora's girdle girdled his loins, tasseled with the congregated teeth of his sires.
Still Moa Artua remains as quiet as ever; and Kolory, seemingly losing his temper, fetches him a box over the head, strips him of his tappa and red cloth, and laying him in a state of nudity in a little trough, covers him from sight. At this proceeding all present loudly applaud and signify their approval by uttering the adjective 'motarkee' with violent emphasis.
She was a genuine busy-body; bustling about the house like a country landlady at an unexpected arrival; for ever giving the young girls tasks to perform, which the little hussies as often neglected; poking into every corner, and rummaging over bundles of old tappa, or making a prodigious clatter among the calabashes.
Word Of The Day