Alone with the Hairy Ainu or, 3,800 miles on a pack saddle in Yezo and a cruise to the Kurile Islands.

The laws of marriage in the Ainu country are not very stringent; in fact, there are no laws. If a young man takes a fancy to a pretty hairy maid, and the maid reciprocates his a...

The Tokachi River is one of the largest and most important in Yezo. Knowing that the Ainu either settle on the sea-shore or up river-courses, I formed an idea that some good typ...

All over Yezo and the Kurile Islands remains of an extinct race of pit-dwellers are to be seen. It is especially near lakes and swamps or along the coast that rectangular, circu...

The road in the proximity of Akkeshi was extremely muddy and slippery, owing to the continuous fogs and rain. A north wind was blowing hard the day I left for Kiritap, and it dr...

From Soya the coast forms a large bay, which opens due north, and which ends in Cape Soya on the eastern side and in Cape Nossyap on the western. Almost in the middle is the sma...

I cannot begin this chapter better than by saying that Ainu religious ideas are essentially chaotic. They recognise no supreme God, and no intelligent Creator; and they cannot b...

I did not remain long at Nemuro after my return from the Kuriles; in fact, I remained only a few hours, and again my baggage was lashed to the pack-saddle, again I was perched o...

I proceeded north. The Ainu scattered here and there on the coast seemed to be hairier and uglier than any of their inland brethren. Two or three women had already put on their...

I have often asked myself _why_ I went to Yezo; and, when there, what possessed me to undertake the laborious task of going round the island, up its largest rivers, travelling t...

Oshamambe is a group of seventy houses, just midway between Mororran and Mori. The Ainu of this bay are poor specimens of their race, as most of them have intermarried with Japa...

From Nemuro I put to sea in a miserable little Japanese craft--a kind of tug-boat--which once or twice a year goes to the principal islands of the Kurile group, and brings back...

The music of each nation has certain characteristics of its own; and though according to European ideas the music of what are called barbarous peoples may sound in some sense ex...

I left Kushiro one morning, and made my way up the river, not by boat but along its banks on horseback, so as to get a better idea of the surrounding country and its inhabitants...

I decided to stop a day at Otsu, so as to recover from the fatigue of my late travels and adventures, and I chose my quarters in the _yadoya_ of a Japanese called Inomata Yoshit...

Ainu architecture is by no means elaborate, let alone beautiful; but though it is so simple, it is to a certain extent varied, differing according to the exigencies of climate a...

It was late in the evening when I arrived at Poronai.[35] Saruru, the last village I had passed, had only six Ainu and three Japanese huts, and the nine or ten miles between the...

The Ainu people may be called physically strong, but yet they are not to be compared to the Caucasian races. They are fairly good walkers, capable mountaineers, and deft marksme...

The Ainu often name their villages after rivers, and this word Horobets, which in English means "large river," is an instance of this custom. In Southern Japan, previous to my v...

The Ainu men generally go naked in summer time, but in some parts of Yezo civilisation has forced them to adopt cheap Japanese clothes. It must not be supposed from this that th...

The expression of ideas by graphic signs is utterly unknown to the Ainu. They have no alphabet, and furthermore, they have no methods whatever of writing. Hence the utter incapa...

Sappro, the present capital of Hokkaido, is a town of fairly large size, with wide streets intersecting each other at right angles. The Hokkaido-cho, a high red-brick building,...

After quitting Saru Mombets I was altogether out of the beaten tracks. The twenty-two miles to Shimokebo were monotonous in the extreme. High cliffs towered above me on the one...

On the north side of the mouth of the Ishikari River is an Ainu village called Raishats. Its inhabitants are not natives of this island, but were imported by the Japanese Govern...

The mental qualities of the Ainu are not many, and what they have are by no means great; nor are they improved by education, for what they know comes more from inheritance than...

A large number of Ainu have taken up their abode on the banks of the River Saru, or Sharu, as it is called by them, and Piratori, nearly fifteen miles from the coast, is the lar...

The faces of the Ainu are far from ugly, and their heads are singularly picturesque, though of course there are the finer types as there are the meaner; by which we come to grad...

The following physiological remarks are mostly from observations made on Ainu of the Upper Tokachi district, the natives of which have had no communication with Europeans and li...

The mountain pass between Horoizumi and Shoya is supposed to be very dangerous on account of bears. I rode the ten miles quietly, but failed to meet or see any. The way through...

The Ainu have few public performances, and no special time of the year is fixed for them. As it so happened, a festival--a "Iyomanrei"--took place while I was at Piratori.

Portrait of the Author _Frontispiece._ Aputa 1 Ainu Woman saluting 6 Toya Lake, near Aputa 11 Fisherman's Hut 12 Pack-Saddle 18 Norboribets Volcano 19 Horobets 21 Storehouses at...