On this day ...
20 September 1770
Endeavour Voyage Maps
James Cook's Journal Ms 1, National Library of Australia
Transcript of Cook's Journal
Joseph Banks's Journal
Sydney Parkinson's Journal
Description of the Island of Savu
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We had no opportunity to examine any of their manufactures, except that of their cloth, which they spin, weave, and dye; we did not indeed see them employed, but many of the instruments which they use fell in our way. We saw their machine for clearing cotton of its seeds, which is made upon the same principles as those in Europe, but is so small that it might be taken for a model, or a toy: it consists of two cylinders, like our round rulers, somewhat less than an inch in diameter, one of which, being turned round by a plain winch, turns the other by means of an endless worm; and the whole machine is not more than fourteen inches long, and seven high: that which we saw had been much used, and many pieces of cotton were hanging about it, so that there is no reason to doubt its being a fair specimen of the rest. We also once saw their apparatus for spinning; it consisted of a bobbin, on which was wound a small quantity of thread, and a kind of distaff filled with cotton; we conjectured therefore that they spin by hand, as the women of Europe did before the introduction of wheels; and I am told that they have not yet found their way into some parts of it. Their loom seemed to be in one respect preferable to ours, for the web was not stretched upon a frame, but extended by a piece of wood at each end, round one of which the cloth was rolled, and round the other the threads: the web was about half a yard broad, and the length of the shuttle was equal to the breadth of the web, so that probably their work goes on but slowly. That they dyed this cloth we first guessed from its colour, and from the indigo which we saw in their plantations; and our conjecture was afterwards confirmed by Mr. Lange’s account. I have already observed, that it is dyed in the yarn, and we once saw them dying what was said to be girdles for the women, of a dirty red, but with what drug we did not think it worth while to enquire.
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Vols. II-III of the London 1773 edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, page 696, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
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