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[Page 428]

Manners & Customs of the inhabitants of the Islands in the Pacifick Ocean.

the Europeans To this may also be added a fault which is too frequent even among the politest nations I mean an invincible attachment to the Customs which they have learnt from their forefathers which these people are indeed in this degree excusable for they derive their original not from Creation but from the womb of an inferior divinity who was herself with those of equal rank descended from the God Causer of Earthquakes they therefore look upon it as a Kind of Sacriledge to attempt to amend Customs which they suppose to have had their original either from their deities or their first ancestors who they hold as little inferior to the divinties themselves

The thing in which they shew the most ingenuity is the making & dying of their Cloth in the description of these especialy the latter I shall be rather diffuse as I am not without hopes that my countrey men may receive some advantage either from the things themselves or at least by hints derivd from them

The Material of which it is made is the interior bark or liber of 3 sorts of trees the Chinese paper mulberry Morus Papyrifera the Breadfruit tree Sitodium

 

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