Bickmore.] 334 [December 4, 



from the Ainos themselves. As some of the questions proved some- 

 what perplexing, they became t>red before the list was completed, 

 and I failed, therefore to get replies to all my queries. 



They have many gods, but fire — not the sun, the moon, nor the 

 stars — is the principal one, and they are accustomed to pray to it in 

 general terms, for all they may need. They do not buy their wives, 

 but are expected to make presents to her parents of saki, tobacco, and 

 fish. At their marriages they make no great rejoicing or di'^play. 

 Their only feast is at the beginning of the new year, when they make 

 offerings to all the gods. When a wife dies they burn the house in 

 which she lived, but when a man dies they bury him without any fu- 

 neral ceremony, (perhaps the Interpreter meant if he was a common 

 man). To inter a body they dig a hole in the ground and lay in 

 planks in the form of a box. The body is then clothed in white^ and 

 placed in at full length, with the head to the east, "because that is 

 where the sun rises." A widower may marry again in two or three 

 years, but a woman can only marry once; (this the Interpreter prob- 

 ably intended to say was their law but not the universal custom). A 

 man can have but one acknowledged wife, but any number of concu- 

 bines, each of whom always lives in a separate house. At present 

 they have no king, but a great chief living at Saroo. The Interpre- 

 ter had met other Ainos whom he could not understand; (that is to 

 say, there are at least two ditferent dialects in the Aino language). 

 They keep no cats but catch rats in traps. They have "only Japanese 

 horses." They keep fowls but no ducks. They eat their fowls and 

 what wild birds they can take, but never eat eggs. They have no spe- 

 cial burying grounds, and they desire only to forget their deceased rel- 

 atives as soon as possible. They never speak of the dead, and if a 

 man should call on a friend, and inquire for his deceased wife and say 

 "Oh! is she dead?" such an act would be considered the grossest 

 breach of good breeding. They say they can make poison, but refused 

 to tell how, and farther declared that they kept it such a secret that 

 even the Japanese officials knew nothing of the process. They have 

 sorcerers whose advice they are accustomed to ask. A Japanese 

 doctor who had lived long among them told me that when a 

 man was lost at sea or among the mountains, his wife cries, and all 

 her neighbors beat her with sticks to make her forget her sorrow. 

 When the Interpreter was asked what would become of him after lie 

 died, he replied he did not know; and when he was asked if lie ex- 

 pected to go to a place of happiness or a place of misery, hereafter, 

 he simply laughed as if he did not understand the question or thought 

 it extremely foolish. They have no written characters, and only oral 

 traditions. 



