Indeed, with regard to all the things I saw during my eventful career in the South Seas, I have been exceedingly careful not to exaggerate, or in any way to mislead or deceive my readers.

This cloth, I say, was remarkably like to coarse brown cotton cloth.

It had a seam or fibre down the centre of it, from which diverged other fibres, about the size of a bristle.

There were two layers of these fibres, very long and tough, the one layer crossing the other obliquely, and the whole was cemented together with a still finer fibrous and adhesive substance.

When we regarded it attentively, we could with difficulty believe that it had not been woven by human hands.