458 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1890. 



strips 40 inches in length and dried. Dried herrings are abundant in 

 every house, bu.t they are not pleasing to the eye. The roe of the salmon, 

 masn, is also dried and much prized by the people.. 



For vegetable food they depend partly upon the produce of small 

 patches of ground, which they cultivate in a rather careless manner, 

 and partly upon the natural products of the soil. A preparation 

 known as shikcribikina is the dried leaves of some plant unknown to 

 me, whicb they find on the mountains. Lily roots dried on strings are 

 iound in every house. At Abashiri I found strings of small fruit, 

 which the Ainos called maou. These fruits belong to the genus Rosa, 

 and the Ainos eat them both green and dried. Flat, circular cakes of 

 dried lily roots, with a hole through the center, are tied together with 

 bark, but I was unable to get a translation of the name they bear, 

 which is, as I understood the word, umbayero. At Abashiri I found 

 some very good flour, but its source could not be learned. Numerous 

 other varieties of food are to be seen in the collection. 



Cooking is carried on in an iron kettle with a wooden cover, over the 

 fire-place. Every imaginable edible substance that they possess goes 

 into the indescribable stew — fish, vegetable tops and roots, flesh and 

 fowl, altogether — to be either ladled out with wooden spoons or fished 

 out with chop-sticks from time to time, as one of the family requires 

 food. Fish is also spitted before the fire on sticks, which are stuck in 

 the ashes. All their food is either boiled in the pot or roasted on sticks 

 in this manner. 



SAKE DRINKING. 



From certain allusions in what are presumed to be native folk-lore 

 stories, it would seem that the Ainos have long known how to make a 

 kind of fermented drink from rice and millet. It is not unlikely that 

 they were taught by the Japanese. I am not aware that they do at 

 present make any such beverage, but they are inordinately fond of 

 Japanese sake. They will do almost anything to get sake, and they 

 drink it cold in great excess whenever they can obtain it. 



The usual form of sake cups, which, as already stated, are among 

 the treasures of the household, is represented in Fig. 77. The pecul- 

 iar carved sticks are mustache-lifters. These are made by the Ainos, 

 as the carving shows, but some of them are lacquered. The Ainos at 

 Shari and also at Bekkai claim, as I understood the jargon, that their 

 ancestors were acquainted with the use of lacquer and that they made 

 the sticks. I am disposed to doubt these statements, but it is a ques- 

 tion how they obtained the lacquered sticks. Some of these are cer- 

 tainly quite old, and they were highly valued by their possessors, who 

 probably would not have parted with them but in consideration of a 

 reward of sake in addition to the price demanded. When they were 

 obtained, the carving was quite filled with dirt, but that did not inter- 

 fere with their proper use by the people. 



