A girdle of split rattan wound about a dozen times round the waist is in common use here, but I do not recollect having seen it in the Louisiade.
MANUFACTURES.
Among other articles of native manufacture I may mention large baked earthen pots* used in cooking, also very neatly made round flat-bottomed baskets in sets of four, partially fitting into each other, with a woven belt to suspend them from the shoulders by--in these various small articles are carried, among them the spatula and calabash, with lime to be used in betel chewing--and a netted bag, a foot and a half in width and one in depth.

Their rope is beautifully made of the long tough stringy bark of a tree, strongly twisted and laid up in three strands, and for finer lines and twine a kind of flax, resembling the New Zealand, but still more the Manila sort, is used here.

The finest sample of the prepared material which I saw measured eleven feet in length, and consisted of a bundle of rather fine white fibres.

Although very much coarser than our hemp, it is of nearly uniform size, and possesses considerable strength, but breaks easily when knotted.

We saw it in considerable quantity, but had no means of ascertaining the plant from which it is derived, probably, however, a banana of some kind.