THE ANCIENT PIT-DWELLERS OF YEZO. 



425 



2.25 metres deep, and 1.30 metres from the floor to the highest part of 

 the ceiling. The beds were simply bunks, 38 centimetres from the floor 

 and 60 centimetres wide. The entrance is through a small, low door- 



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Fig. 65. 

 Plan of Dwelling, Siitkotan. 



way from the covered passage. This passage may run quite across the 

 back of the thatched house and extend some distance beyond it, as in 

 the house shown in Plate lxxx, which is the one from which the plan is 

 drawn. As one descends iuto the hut, it seems very damp and gloomy. 

 There is nothing to be seen but the bare floor, the sleeping bunks on the 

 sides, and the fireplace made by piling up rounded stones in oue corner. 

 I have expressed tue belief that these Shikotan huts are the modern 

 representatives of the ancient pit-dwellings of Yezo. Perhaps it will 

 be very difficult, or even impossible, to prove this connection ; cer- 

 tainly the huts I saw were much smaller than mauy of the pits of Yezo, 

 but I do not know what kind of a pit would be left by the falling in of 

 one of these houses. I should think, after weathering a few years, it 

 might not be very unlike the piis. On the other hand, it may be that 

 the people, having learned to build better above ground, no longer 

 require such large and deep subterranean huts as in the past, and that 

 these shallow excavations are but survivals of the old plan of construc- 

 tion, which is no longer useful. However this may be, it would seem 

 that the ancient pit-dwellers were driven from Yezo, perhaps by the 

 Ainos, to the Kuriles, for the pits cau be traced through Yeterof, and 

 perhaps in the smaller islands beyond. The existence of the pits in 

 Yeterof, the finding by Professor Milne of a small remnant of people 



