In Many
Houses There Are Broad Seats A Few Inches High, On Which The Elder
Men Sit Cross-Legged, As Their Custom Is, Not Squatting Japanese
Fashion On The Heels.
A water-tub always rests on a stand by the
door, and the dried fish and venison or bear for daily use hang
from the rafters, as well as a few skins.
Besides these things
there are a few absolute necessaries, - lacquer or wooden bowls for
food and sake, a chopping-board and rude chopping-knife, a cleft-
stick for burning strips of birch-bark, a triply-cleft stick for
supporting the potsherd in which, on rare occasions, they burn a
wick with oil, the component parts of their rude loom, the bark of
which they make their clothes, the reeds of which they make their
mats, - and the inventory of the essentials of their life is nearly
complete. No iron enters into the construction of their houses,
its place being supplied by a remarkably tenacious fibre.
I have before described the preparation of their food, which
usually consists of a stew "of abominable things." They eat salt
and fresh fish, dried fish, seaweed, slugs, the various vegetables
which grow in the wilderness of tall weeds which surrounds their
villages, wild roots and berries, fresh and dried venison and bear;
their carnival consisting of fresh bear's flesh and sake, seaweed,
mushrooms, and anything they can get, in fact, which is not
poisonous, mixing everything up together. They use a wooden spoon
for stirring, and eat with chopsticks.
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