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Interested though he was in the manufacture and decoration of this beautiful paper-cloth, Hina's son, the demi-god Maui, held aloof from the work. In the making of tapa man's hand was tabu, yet he could not forbear an occasional suggestion when his mother created mystic designs for decoration of her work.
This paper-cloth was once made throughout all the South Sea Islands. Breadfruit, banian, mulberry, and other barks furnished the fiber. The outer rough bark was scraped off with a shell, and the inner rind slightly beaten and allowed to ferment. It was then beaten over a tree-trunk with mallets of iron-wood about eighteen inches long, grooved coarsely on one side and more finely on the other.
For their caps they made remarkably fine textures, open-meshed, filmy as gauze, which confined their abundant black hair, and to which were added flowers, either natural or beautifully preserved in wax. Their principal garment, the cahu, was a long and flowing piece of the paper-cloth, of firmer texture, dyed in brilliant colors, or of white adorned with tasteful patterns.
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