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Updated: June 8, 2025
The plants from some melon-seeds which were sown on their first arrival were flourishing, and the natives eagerly begged for more. Many articles manufactured by the natives have not yet been described. The mode of making cloth from the bark of the paper-mulberry was curious.
Having finished his prayers, if such all this bowing and muttering words could be intended for, the chief conducted me back to his house. Here he introduced me to his wife, pretty-looking young woman, of a bright brown colour, clothed in somewhat scanty garments, composed of cloth, manufactured from the paper-mulberry tree.
The pace was slow, the road was dull and dreary, and many were the inquiries made for the 'Half-way House, long before we reached it. We had still two miles farther to go, in the course of which we were drenched by a heavy shower. At last we came to a native house, crowded with people, where they were making tappa or kapa the cloth made from the bark of the paper-mulberry.
They manufactured three sorts of cloth for dress. The finest and whitest was made from the paper-mulberry tree, and was used for the dresses of the chief people. The second, used by the common people, was made from the bread-fruit tree, and the third from a tree resembling a fig-tree.
"I have often watched the whole process of making tappa, or native cloth, from the bark of the paper-mulberry; it is quite simple, and I have no doubt we can succeed in it; I have talked with Eiulo on the subject and find that he understands the process thoroughly." "But are there any paper-mulberries on the island!" inquired Morton. "I have not seen any," answered Arthur.
We, however, managed to see something of the country the roads in course of construction in all directions across it, the cotton plantations and well-cultivated gardens, and many other signs of the industry of the people. The greatest novelty was the manufacture of the native cloth, or Tapa, formed out of the bark of the paper-mulberry tree.
She carried fully 900 tons of cargo, consisting of jewels, spices, drugs, silks, calicoes, quilts, carpets, and colours, as also elephants' teeth, porcelain vessels and china, cocoa-nuts, hides, ebony, bedsteads of the same, cloths made from the rinds of trees, probably of the paper-mulberry tree; the whole valued at not less than 150,000 pounds sterling.
Among other trees must be mentioned the Chinese paper-mulberry, from which their cloth was, and is still, manufactured, and two species of fig-trees. There were no serpents and no wild quadrupeds on the island, except rats. Their tame animals were hogs, dogs, and poultry, and there were wild ducks, pigeons, paroquets, and a few other birds.
The dress of the natives was formed from cloth made of the bark of the paper-mulberry tree. Captain Cook, Mr Banks, and others accompanied these chiefs on shore, where they met another chief, Tubourai Tamaide, and formed a treaty of friendship with him. He invited them to his house, and gave them a feast of fish, bread-fruit, cocoanuts, and plantains, dressed after the native fashion.
He was a man of immense size, with massive but beautifully moulded limbs and figure, only parts of which, the broad chest and muscular arms, were uncovered; for, although the lower orders generally wore no other clothing than a strip of cloth called maro round their loins, the chief, on particular occasions, wrapped his person in voluminous folds of a species of native cloth made from the bark of the Chinese paper-mulberry.
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