eight feet high, and somewhat thicker than a man's thumb; its excellence
is to be thin, straight, tall, and without branches: The lower leaves,
therefore, are carefully plucked off, with their germs, as often as
there is any appearance of their producing a branch.

But though the cloth made of these three trees is different, it is all
manufactured in the same manner; I shall, therefore, describe the
process only in the fine sort, that is made of the mulberry.[17] When
the trees are of a proper size, they are drawn up, and stripped of their
branches, after which the roots and tops are cut off; the bark of these
rods being then slit up longitudinally is easily drawn off, and, when a
proper quantity has been procured, it is carried down to some running
water, in which it is deposited to soak, and secured from floating away
by heavy stones: When it is supposed to be sufficiently softened, the
women servants go down to the brook, and stripping themselves, sit down
in the water, to separate the inner bark from the green bark on the
outside; to do this they place the under side upon a flat smooth board,
and with the shell which our dealers call Tyger's tongue, _Tellina
gargadia_, scrape it very carefully, dipping it continually in the water
till nothing remains but the fine fibres of the inner coat. Being thus
prepared in the afternoon, they are spread out upon plantain leaves in
the evening; and in this part of the work there appears to be some
difficulty, as the mistress of the family always superintends the doing
of it: They are placed in lengths of about eleven or twelve yards, one
by the side of another, till they are about a foot broad, and two or
three layers are also laid one upon the other: Care is taken that the
cloth shall be in all parts of an equal thickness, so that if the bark
happens to be thinner in any particular part of one layer than the rest,
a piece that is somewhat thicker is picked out to be laid over it in the
next. In this state it remains till the morning, when great part of the