THE HAIRY AINU 



155 



primitive but interesting, and often exciting. A party of travellers, not far from the river banks, 

 were attracted by shouts and .cries of excitement on the river. They hurried to the bank 

 to learn the cause. Two native "dug-outs" were coming swiftly down with the strong current, 

 parallel with each other and about 7 feet apart. There were three people in each "dug-out" 

 a woman with a paddle steering at the prow, another woman crouched in the stern, and a 

 man standing up in the middle. A coarse net made of young vines, and about 5 feet square, 

 was fastened to two poles 7 or 8 feet long. The men who stood in the canoes each held a 

 pole, to the upper end of which the net was attached, and attentively watched the water. The 

 salmon were coming up the stream from the sea. The small net was plunged into the water 

 between the canoes, and nearly every time it was raised a large salmon was caught and flung 

 into one or other of the " dug-outs," where the woman crouching in the stern crushed its head 

 with a large stone. If a fish escaped, yells of indignation, especially from the women, were 

 heard. Both men and women were naked, and the dexterity and speed with which they paddled 

 their canoes down the stream, working .their net at the same time, and seldom missing a fish, 

 were marvellous. 



As the Ainu of to-day is and lives, .so Japanese art and traditions depict him in the dawn 

 of history. His language, religion, dress, and manner of life are the same as of old. He has 

 no alphabet, no writing, and no numbers above a thousand. In character and morals he is 

 still stupid, good-natured, brave, peaceable, and gentle, but apparently destined soon to be 

 numbered among the extinct races. His religious notions are of the vaguest possible kind, 

 his gods being merely wooden sticks and .posts so whittled as to let the shavings fall down 

 in curls. But the chief divinity seems to be the bear, which is eaten as well as worshipped. 

 A young bear, captured in the early spring, and confined in a cage, is kept in the chief's 

 house, where it is suckled by an Ainu -woman, and played with by the children till it becomes 



A WAYSIDE RESTING-PLACE IN JAPAN. 



