Note 137 — Chapter IV

The bark of trees such as the Hybiscus Tiliaceus, and that of the Birch (see Yates, p. 305-6). Birch bark was embroidered, till latterly, by the Indian women in North America with porcupines’ quills. Pigafetta says (writing in the sixteenth century) that in the kingdom of Congo many different kinds of stuff were manufactured from the palm-tree fibre. He instances cloths on which patterns were wrought, and likewise a material resembling “velvet on both sides.”