The Horses Were Unloaded By The Time
I Arrived, And Several Courteous Ainos Showed Me To My Room,
Opening On A Small Courtyard With A Heavy Gate.
The room was
musty, and, being rarely used, swarmed with spiders.
A saucer of
fish-oil and a wick rendered darkness visible, and showed faintly
the dark, pathetic faces of a row of Ainos in the verandah, who
retired noiselessly with their graceful salutation when I bade them
good-night. Food was hardly to be expected, yet they gave me rice,
potatoes, and black beans boiled in equal parts of brine and syrup,
which are very palatable. The cuts and bruises of yesterday became
so very painful with the cold of the early morning that I have been
obliged to remain here.
I. L. B.
LETTER XLI
A Group of Fathers - The Lebunge Ainos - The Salisburia adiantifolia-
-A Family Group - The Missing Link - Oshamambe - Disorderly Horses -
The River Yurapu - The Seaside - Aino Canoes - The Last Morning -
Dodging Europeans.
HAKODATE, September 12.
Lebunge is a most fascinating place in its awful isolation. The
house-master was a friendly man, and much attached to the Ainos.
If other officials entrusted with Aino concerns treat the Ainos as
fraternally as those of Usu and Lebunge, there is not much to
lament. This man also gave them a high character for honesty and
harmlessness, and asked if they might come and see me before I
left; so twenty men, mostly carrying very pretty children, came
into the yard with the horses. They had never seen a foreigner,
but, either from apathy or politeness, they neither stare nor press
upon one as the Japanese do, and always make a courteous
recognition. The bear-skin housing of my saddle pleased them very
much, and my boots of unblacked leather, which they compare to the
deer-hide moccasins which they wear for winter hunting. Their
voices were the lowest and most musical that I have heard,
incongruous sounds to proceed from such hairy, powerful-looking
men. Their love for their children was most marked. They caressed
them tenderly, and held them aloft for notice, and when the house-
master told them how much I admired the brown, dark-eyed, winsome
creatures, their faces lighted with pleasure, and they saluted me
over and over again. These, like other Ainos, utter a short
screeching sound when they are not pleased, and then one recognises
the savage.
These Lebunge Ainos differ considerably from those of the eastern
villages, and I have again to notice the decided sound or click of
the ts at the beginning of many words. Their skins are as swarthy
as those of Bedaween, their foreheads comparatively low, their eyes
far more deeply set their stature lower, their hair yet more
abundant, the look of wistful melancholy more marked, and two, who
were unclothed for hard work in fashioning a canoe, were almost
entirely covered with short, black hair, specially thick on the
shoulders and back, and so completely concealing the skin as to
reconcile one to the lack of clothing.
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