Their parents are more demonstrative in their
affection than the Japanese are, caressing them a good deal, and
two of the men are devoted to children who are not their own.
These little ones are as grave and dignified as Japanese children,
and are very gentle.
I went out soon after five, when the dew was glittering in the
sunshine, and the mountain hollow in which Biratori stands was
looking its very best, and the silence of the place, even though
the people were all astir, was as impressive as that of the night
before. What a strange life! knowing nothing, hoping nothing,
fearing a little, the need for clothes and food the one motive
principle, sake in abundance the one good! How very few points of
contact it is possible to have! I was just thinking so when
Shinondi met me, and took me to his house to see if I could do
anything for a child sorely afflicted with skin disease, and his
extreme tenderness for this very loathsome object made me feel that
human affections were the same among them as with us. He had
carried it on his back from a village, five miles distant, that
morning, in the hope that it might be cured. As soon as I entered
he laid a fine mat on the floor, and covered the guest-seat with a
bearskin. After breakfast he took me to the lodge of the sub-
chief, the largest in the village, 45 feet square, and into about
twenty others all constructed in the same way, but some of them
were not more than 20 feet square. In all I was received with the
same courtesy, but a few of the people asked Shinondi not to take
me into their houses, as they did not want me to see how poor they
are. In every house there was the low shelf with more or fewer
curios upon it, but, besides these, none but the barest necessaries
of life, though the skins which they sell or barter every year
would enable them to surround themselves with comforts, were it not
that their gains represent to them sake, and nothing else. They
are not nomads. On the contrary, they cling tenaciously to the
sites on which their fathers have lived and died. But anything
more deplorable than the attempts at cultivation which surround
their lodges could not be seen. The soil is little better than
white sand, on which without manure they attempt to grow millet,
which is to them in the place of rice, pumpkins, onions, and
tobacco; but the look of their plots is as if they had been
cultivated ten years ago, and some chance-sown grain and vegetables
had come up among the weeds. When nothing more will grow, they
partially clear another bit of forest, and exhaust that in its
turn.
In every house the same honour was paid to a guest. This seems a
savage virtue which is not strong enough to survive much contact
with civilisation.
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