Some account of Savu
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machine, otherwise from its slightness I should have taken it for no more than a Duch toy of the best sort. Their spinning geer I also once saw: it consisted of a bobbin on which a small quantity of thread was wound and a kind of distaff filld with cotton from whence I conjecture that they spin by hand, as our women in Europe did before wheels were introducd and I am told still do in some parts of Europe where that improvement is not receiv’d. Their Loom I also saw: it had this merit in preference to ours that the web was not stretchd on a frame but only extended by a peice of wood at each end, round one of which the cloth was rolld as the threads were round the other. I had not an opportunity of seing it usd so cannot at all describe it, only can say that it appeard very simple, much more so than ours and that the shuttle was as long as the breadth of the web which was about ½ a yard; in all probability from this circumstance and the unsteadiness of a web fixd to nothing the work must go on very slow. That they dyed their own cloth we first guessd by the indigo which
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from State Library of NSW Transcription of Banks's Journal page (vol. 2) 367, February 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-banks_remarks-332.html