276

ARTS AND MANUFACTURES

without danger of leaving any of the fibres be-hind. The bark is then soaked in water for aday and night, and scraped carefully with shellsfor the purpose of removing the outer bark, orepidermis, which is thrown away. The innerbark is then rolled up lengthwise, and soakedin water for another day; it now swells, be-comes tougher, and more capable of beingbeaten out into a firm texture: being thus farprepared, the operation of tootoo , or beating,commences. This part of the work is per-formed by means of a mallet a foot long, andtwo inches thick, in the form of a parallelopi-pedon, two opposite sides being grooved longi-tudinally to the depth and breadth of about aline, with intervals of a quarter of an inch.The bark, which is from two to five feet long,and one to three inches broad, is then laid upona beam of wood about six feet long, and nineinches in breadth and thickness, which is sup-ported about an inch from the ground bypieces of wood at each end, so as to allow of acertain degree of vibration. Two or three wo-men generally sit at the same beam ; eachplaces her bark transversely upon the beam im-mediately before her, and while she beats withher right hand, with her left she moves it slowlyto and fro, so that every part becomes beaten