1872. A. Domett, `Ranolf,' p. 11:
"The tangles black
Of looped and shining supple jack."
1874. W. M. B., `Narrative of Edward Crewe,' p. 199:
The supple-jack, that stopper to all speedy progression in the
New Zealand forest."
1881. J.L. Campbell, `Poenamo,' p. 154:
"Forty or fifty feet of supple-jack. This creeper is of the thickness of your finger, and runs along the ground, and goes up the trees and springs across from one tree to the other, spanning great gaps in some mysterious manner of its own—a tough, rascally creeper that won't break, that you can't twist in two, that you must cut, that trips you by the foot or the leg, and sometimes catches you by the neck . . . so useful withal in its proper places."
1882. T. H. Potts, `Out in the Open,' p. 71:
"Threading with somewhat painful care intricacies formed by loops and snares of bewildering supple-jacks, that living study of Gordian entanglement, nature-woven, for patient exercise of hand and foot."
1892. A. Sutherland, `Elementary Geography of British Colonies,' p. 309:
"Laced together by creepers called supple-jacks, which twine and twist for hundreds of yards, with stems as thick as a man's wrist, so as to make the forests impassable except with axes and immense labour."