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[Page 439]

Manners & Customs of the S. Sea Islands

dye & squeesing them dry again until they have sufficiently extracted all their virtue when they throw away the remaining leaves keeping however the Mooo which serves them instead of a brush to lay the colour upon the Cloth The receptacle usd for the liquid dye is constantly a Plantain leaf whether from any property it may have agreable to the colour or the great ease with which they are always got & the facility of dividing one & making of it many small cups in which the dye may be distributed to every one in company I do not know Their method of laying it on the Cloth is this they take it up in the fibres of the Mooo & rubbing that gently over the Cloth spread the outside of it with a thin coat of dye this of the thick cloth the thin they very seldom dye more than the edges of some indeed I have seen dyed through as if it had been soakd in the dye but had not near so elegant a colour as that on which a thin coat only was laid on the outside

Though the Etou Leaf is the most generaly usd & I beleive produces the finest colour yet there are several more which being mixd with the Juice of the little figs produce a red colour, as Tournefortia Sericea which they call Taheinoo Convolvulus brasilienis

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