When the women have been employd in dying cloth they industriously preserve the colour upon their fingers and nails upon which it shews with its greatest beauty. They look upon this as no small ornament and I have been sometimes inclind to beleive that they even borrow the dye of each other merely for the purpose of dying their fingers; whether it is esteemd as a beauty, a mark of their housewifry in being able to dye, or their riches in having cloth to dye I know not.

Of what use this preparation may be of to my Countreymen either in itself or in any hints which may be drawn from an admixture of vegetable substances so totaly different from any thing of the kind that is practis'd in Europe, I am not enough vers'd in Chymistry to be able to guess, I must however hope that it will be of some. The latent qualities of vegetables have already furnishd our most valuable dyes; no one from an inspection of the Plants could guess that any coulour was hid under the herbs of

Voyaging Accounts