A. S. Bickmore on the Ainos of Saghalien. 377 
hair, are described as inhabiting the other side of the East 
Sea.” is East Sea was probably the one we now call the 
sea of Japan. During the Sui dynasty (A. D. 60 a 
notice occurs of “the tribe Mo-zin, consisting of fifty hordes, 
living in the northwest of the land, Woke (Japan).” 
That none of these people lived in the territories immedi- 
ately tyibutary to China, in those early times, is proved by the 
fact, that in A. D. 659, the Japanese ‘on one of their embassies 
to the court of that great empire took two Ainos with them to 
exhibit as curiosities. 
This people are undoubtedly passing away. Even during 
the last century and a half that the northern of the Kurile 
chain has been a part of the Russian empire, their numbers on 
those islands have been ascertained to have greatly diminished, 
though the Russians have unquestionably treated such obedi- 
ent subjects with the greatest kindness. The causes of this 
decrease are supposed to have been the ravages of the small 
pox, and the considerable numbers lost while crossing from 
island to island in their frail boats over those stormy seas. 
On Yesso and Saghalien, where they have for several centu- 
ries continued under the merciless tyranny of the Japanese 
government, their numbers have probably diminished in still 
greater proportion. At Kusyunai, on the latter island, I was 
assured by a Russian officer that when some Ainos came there 
to escape from the Japanese and place themselves under the 
protection of the Russian government, and the official sta- 
tioned there had refused to receive them for fear of complicat- 
ing the two governments. and had sent them back, the Japa- 
nese government “‘beheaded them to a man.” <A_ great 
to believe that if the enlightened nations of the western world 
had been a few centuries later in reaching that distant region 
of gee east, these people would only have been known to us by 
Though they were, lo mostly subjugated by the 
mgtore 8 i ay ey of Yesso continue inde- 
pendent down to the present time, and here, far removed from 
any influence of the Gilyaks, Kamtschadales and Russians on 
south, we may expect to find these people still retaining a 
ideas of ‘heir ancasintt, and practicing all their ancient customs. 
