older men, but very few of the younger, have their bodies and limbs covered with thick black hair, about an inch long. The term "hairy Kuriles," applied to them as a characteristic hairy race, is a mythical expression of book-makers, as the excessively hirsute covering supposed to be universal among the Ainos is not to be found by the investi

gator on the ground. Their skin is brown, their eyes are horizontal, and their noses low, with the lobes well rounded out. The women are of proportionate stature to the men, but, unlike them, are very ugly. I never met with a handsome Ainō female, though I have seen many of the Yezo women. Their mouths seem like those of ogres, and to stretch from ear to ear. This arises from the fact that they tattoo a

An Aino Chief from Yezo. (From a photograph wide band of dirty blue, like

the woad of the ancient Britons, around their lips, to the extent of three-quarters of an inch, and still longer at the tapering extremities. The tattooing is so completely done, that many persons mistake it for a daub of blue paint, like the artificial exaggeration of a circus clown's mouth. They increase their hideousness by joining their eyebrows over the nose by a fresh band of tattooing. This practice is resorted to in the case of married women and females who are of age, just as that of blackening the teeth and shaving the eyebrows is among the Japanese.

They are said to be faithful wives and laborious helpmates, their moral qualities compensating for their lack of physical charms. The women assist in hunting and fishing, often possessing equal skill with the men. They carry their babies pickapack, as the Japanese mothers, except that the strap passing under the child is put round the mother's forehead. Polygamy is permitted.

Their weapons are of the rudest form. The three-pronged spear is used for the salmon. The single-bladed lance is for the bear, their most terrible enemy, which they regard with superstitious reverence. Their bows are simply peeled boughs, three feet long. The arrows

are one foot shorter, and, like those used by the tribes on the coast of Siberia and in Formosa, have no feather on the shaft. Their pipes are of the same form as those so common in Japan and China; and one obtained from an Ainō came from Santan, a place in Amurland.

The Ainōs possess dogs, which they use in hunting, understand the use of charcoal and candles, make excellent baskets and wicker-work of many kinds; and some of their fine bark-cloth and ornamented weapons for their chiefs show a skill and taste that compare very favorably with those exhibited by the North American Indians. Their oars, having handles fixed crosswise, or sculls made in two pieces, are almost exactly like those of the Japanese. Their river-canoes are dug out of a log, usually elm. Two men will fashion one in five days. For the sea-coast, they use a frame of wood, lacing on the sides with bark fibre. They are skillful canoe-men, using either pole or paddle.

The language of the Ainō is rude and poor, but much like the Japanese. It resembles it so closely, allowing for the fact that it is utterly unpolished and undeveloped, that it seems highly probable it is the original of the present Japanese tongue. They have no written character, no writing of any sort, no literature. A further study may possibly reveal valuable traditions held among them, which at present they are not known by me to have.

In character and morals, the Ainōs are stupid, good-natured, brave, honest, faithful, peaceful, and gentle. The American and English travelers in Yezo agree in ascribing to them these qualities. Their method of salutation is to raise the hands, with the palms upward, and stroke the beard. They understand the rudiments of politeness, as several of their verbal expressions and gestures indicate.

Their religion consists in the worship of kami, or spirits. They do not appear to have any special minister of religion or sacred structure.* They have festivals commemorative of certain events in the

* Some visitors to the Aino villages in Yezo declare that they have noticed there the presence of the phallic shrines and symbols. It might be interesting if this assertion, and the worship of these symbols by the Ainōs, were clearly proved. It would help to settle definitely the question of the origin in Japan of this oldest form of fetich worship, the evidences of which are found all over the Nippon island-chain, including Yezo. I have noticed the prevalence of these shrines and symbols especially in Eastern and Northern Japan, having counted as many as a dozen, and these by the roadside, in a trip to Nikko. The barren of both sexes worship them, or offer them ex voto. In Sagami, Kadzusa, and even in Tökiō itself, they were visible as late as 1874, cut in stone and wood. Formerly the toy-shops, porcelain-shops, and itinerant venders of many wares were well supplied with them, made of various materials; they were to be seen in the cor

past, and they worship the spirit of Yoshitsuné, a Japanese hero, who is supposed to have lived among them in the twelfth century, and who taught them some of the arts of Japanese civilization.

The outward symbols of their religion are sticks of wood two or three feet long, which they whittle all around toward the end into shavings, until the smooth wand contains a mass of pendent curls, as seen in the engraving, page 32. They insert several of these in the ground at certain places, which they hold sacred. The Ainōs also deify mountains, the sea, which furnishes their daily food, bears, the forests, and other natural objects, which they believe to possess intelligence. These wands with the curled shavings are set up in every place of supposed danger or evil omen. The traveler in Yezo sees them on precipices, gorges of mountains, dangerous passes, and riverbanks.

When descending the rapids of a river in Yezo, he will notice that his Ainō boatmen from time to time will throw one of these wands into the river at every dangerous point or turning. The Ainos pray raising their hands above their heads. The Buddhist bonzes have in vain attempted to convert them to Buddhism. They have rude songs, which they chant to their kami, or gods, and to the deified sea, forest, mountains, and bears, especially at the close of the hunting and fishing season, in all affairs of great importance, and at the end of the year. The following is given as a specimen :

"To the sea which nourishes us, to the forest that protects us, we present our grateful thanks. You are two mothers that nourish the same child; do not be angry if we leave one to go to the other."

"The Ainōs will always be the pride of the forest and the sea." The inquirer into the origin of the Japanese must regret that as yet we know comparatively little of the Ainōs and their language. Any opinion hazarded on the subject may be pronounced rash. Yet, after a study of all the obtainable facts, I believe they unmistakably

nucopia-banners at New-year's, paraded in the festivals, and at unexpected times and places disturbed the foreign spectator. It was like a glimpse of life in the antediluvian world, or of ancient India, whence doubtless they came, to see evidences of this once widely prevalent form of early religion. Buddhist priests whom I have consulted affirm, with some warmth, that they arose in the "wicked time of Ashikaga," though the majority of natives, learned and unlearned, say they are the relics of the ancient people, or aborigines. In 1872 the mikado's Government prohibited the sale or exposure of these emblems in any form or shape, together with the more artistic obscenities, pictures, books, carvings, and photographs, sent out from the studios of Paris and London.

point to the Ainōs as the primal ancestors of the Japanese; that the mass of the Japanese people of to-day are substantially of Aino stock. An infusion of foreign blood, the long effects of the daily hot baths and the warm climate of Southern Japan, of Chinese civilization, of agricultural instead of the hunter's method of life, have wrought the change between the Aino and the Japanese.

It seems equally certain that almost all that the Japanese possess which is not of Chinese, Corean, or Tartar origin has descended from the Ainō, or has been developed or improved from an Ainō model. The Ainōs of Yezo hold politically the same relation to the Japanese as the North American Indians do to the white people of the United States; but ethnically they are, with probability bordering very closely on certainty, as the Saxons to the English.*

* I need scarcely, except to relieve, by borrowed humor, the dull weighing of facts, and the construction of an opinion void of all dogmatism, notice the assertion elaborated at length by some Americans, Scotchmen, and others too, for aught I know, that the Ainos are the "ten lost tribes of Israel," or that they are the descendants of the sailors and gold-hunters sent out by King Solomon to gain spoil for his temple at Jerusalem. Really, this search after the "lost tribes"-or have they consolidated into the Wandering Jew ?-is becoming absurd. They are the most discovered people known. They have been found in America, Britain, Persia, India, China, Japan, and in Yezo. I know of but one haystack left to find this needle in, and that is Corea. It will undoubtedly be found there. It has been kindly provided that there are more worlds for these Alexanders to conquer. It is now quite necessary for the archæological respectability of a people that they be the "lost tribes." To the inventory of wonders in Japan some would add that of her containing "the dispersed among the Gentiles," notwithstanding that the same claim has been made for a dozen other nations. It might be well for the man who is searching anxiously for his spectacles to feel on the top of his head. If these would-be discoverers would demonstrate that the "ten tribes of Israel" were ever "lost," in the migratory or geographical sense, they might accomplish more satisfactory work than going up and down the world, ringing a bell for a people whose "loss" may be as imaginary as the spectacles on the pate aforesaid. For the benefit of such, I beg to append one of the Japanese "Tales for Little People:" Little Boy loq. "Old daddy, get me my kite, if you please."

Old Man. "Oh, where is it, my boy? Is that it in the tree opposite ?"

Boy. "No; that is a fish-hawk."

Old Man. "Surely, then, it must be there in the fire. Look out!"

Boy. "No, daddy; that is a crow."

Old Man. "Then, where can it be, I wonder?"

Boy. "Why, daddy, it is there on your head-caught in your hair.”

Old Man. "So it is, I declare. I thought it was a hawk that had caught me by the hair."

III.

MATERIALS OF HISTORY.

BEFORE attempting a brief sketch of Japanese history, it may be interesting to the reader to know something of the sources of such history, and the character and amount of the materials. A dynasty of rulers who ostentatiously boast of twenty-five centuries of unbroken succession should have solid foundation of fact for their boast. The august representatives of the mikado Mutsŭhito,* the one hundred and twenty-third of the imperial line of Dai Nippon, who, in the presence of the President and Congress of the United States, and of the sovereigns of Europe, claimed the immemorial antiquity of the Japanese imperial rule, should have credentials to satisfy the foreigner and silence the skeptic.

In this enlightened age, when all authority is challenged, and a century after the moss of oblivion has covered the historic grave of the doctrine of divine right, the Japanese still cling to the divinity of the mikado, not only making it the dogma of religion and the engine of government, but accrediting their envoys as representatives of, and asking of foreign diplomatists that they address his imperial Japanese majesty as the King of Heaven (Tennō). A nation that has passed through the successive stages of aboriginal migration, tribal government, conquest by invaders, pure monarchy, feudalism, anarchy, and modern consolidated empire, should have secreted the material for much interesting history. In the many lulls of peace, scholars would arise, and opportunities would offer, to record the history which previous generations had made. The foreign historian who will bring the

* Mutsuhito ("meek man"), the present emperor, is the second son of the mikado Komei (1847-1867), whom he succeeded, and the Empress Fujiwara Asako. He was born November 3d, 1850. He succeeded his father February 3d, 1867; was crowned on the 28th day of the Eighth month, 1868; and was married on the 28th of the Twelth month, 1868, to Haruko, daughter of Ichijō Tadaka, a noble of the second degree of the first rank. She was born on the 17th of the Fourth month, 1850. The dowager-empress Asako, mother of the emperor, is of the house of Kujō, and was born on the 14th day of the Twelfth month, 1833.