"The upper end consists of a piece of bamboo fastened between two posts, and the end of the web is tied to it. The weaver sits on the ground, and holds the lower end of the web by means of a wooden bow that passes across her back; she places her feet against a couple of pegs set in the ground, and by leaning backward draws the web out straight. The shuttle consists of a netting-needle a little longer than the width of the web, and, after the thread has been passed through the web, it is driven to its place with a wooden comb. A lath of hard wood serves as a trestle, and is turned on its edge after every stroke.
"With this simple apparatus many thousand yards of cloth are woven in the Philippine Islands every year; it is the cloth almost universally worn by the natives, and it is wonderful to what a degree of fineness it is brought when we remember the rudeness of the loom."
THE BANANA.
When they had satisfied their curiosity concerning the weaving process they continued their walk, and soon found themselves outside the village, and in the midst of a banana-field. It was Fred's turn now to write something, and accordingly he set down a brief description of the banana plant as he saw it in the Philippine Islands:
"The trunk of the banana plant is formed of leaves placed one above another, and cannot properly be called a tree, as it does not contain any woody fibre. It rises from eight to twelve feet high, and spreads out near the top into leaves five or six feet long. The flower rises from the middle of these leaves, and also the spike that holds the fruit; the latter is called the 'regime,' and sometimes has a hundred or more bananas clinging to it.
"Before the fruit is ripe the spike is cut, and soon becomes fit for use. The part of the plant which is in the earth is a sort of large root, and from it there will be successively thirty or more shoots, each one containing its bunch of fruit. As the shoots are of different ages, a single plant contains fruit in all conditions of growth, some ripening while other bunches are just beginning to form. Consequently, every two or three weeks throughout the year a bunch may be cut, and it does not require a very large field to support a man. A good many people eat little else than rice and bananas, and if a man is very poor, he can get along with wild bananas that he gathers in the forest, though he is liable to find it monotonous living."