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They were Japanese policemen, and did not take any chances on us. Even after our interpreter had told them that we were a group of scientists who had come to visit the Ainus they still followed us around most of the morning, keeping polite track of our movements.
I have recovered them from the dead man's blood and have studied them microscopically. They can be definitely recognized. This is plainly a case of aconite poisoning probably suggested to the Oriental mind by the poison arrows of the Ainus of Northern Japan." Dr.
The civilisation of Japan cannot be traced back beyond about the eighth century B.C. Even then the population was probably a mixed flotsam from neighbouring lands Ainus, Koreans, Chinese, and Malays. What was the character of the primitive civilisation resulting from the mixture of these different cultures we do not know. But the chief elements of Japanese civilisation came later from China.
I fancied I saw just a glint of satisfaction in Otaka's eyes. "Like many barbarians," continued Craig, "the Ainus from time immemorial have prepared virulent poisons with which they charged their weapons of the chase and warfare.
The Ainus are broad between the eyes instead of narrow as are the Japanese. They are rather square-headed like Americans as compared with the oval of the Japanese face. They do not have markedly slant eyes, and they are white-skinned. They might feel at home in any place in America. I have seen many old men at home who look like them, old men with beards. This came as a distinct surprise to me.
I never saw a hairy Ainu, and I suspect the Japanese of malice in urging us to admit the Ainus as poor relations; but even if they really are of Aryan descent, that does not prove that they have anything of the slightest importance in common with us as compared to what the Japanese and Chinese have in common with us. Similarity of culture is infinitely more important than a common racial origin.
'The gentleman in the brown suit whose hands I did this afternoon 'He was, agreed Arthur, brightly. 'A very funny thing. Maud frowned. Wit at the expense of Hairy Ainus was one thing at her own another.
The word "Shogun" merely means "General"; the full title of the people whom we call "Shogun" is "Sei-i-Tai Shogun," which means "Barbarian-subduing great General"; the barbarians in question being the Ainus, the Japanese aborigines.
The title of this Fraser bronze was "The End of the Trail," and it was intended to tell the story of a vanishing race, the American Indians. But even more could that picture tell the story of the Ainus of Japan. "They will be entirely extinct in a quarter of a century," our guide said. "They are going fast. They used to be vigorous and militant, as Japanese mythology shows.
I will write rather of the voyage to China, and how I landed the motor on the wharf at Tientsin, and went up the river through a maize and rice-land most charming in spite of intense cold, I thick with clothes as an Arctic traveller; and of the three dreadful earthquakes within two weeks; and how the only map which I had of the city gave no indication of the whereabouts of its military depositories, and I had to seek for them; and of the three days' effort to enter them, for every gate was solid and closed; and how I burned it, but had to observe its flames, without deep pleasure, from beyond the walls to the south, the whole place being one cursed plain; yet how, at one moment, I cried aloud with wild banterings and glad laughters of Tophet to that old Chinaman still alive within it; and how I coasted, and saw the hairy Ainus, man and woman hairy alike; and how, lying one midnight awake in my cabin, the Speranza being in a still glassy water under a cliff overhung by drooping trees it was the harbour of Chemulpo to me lying awake came the thought: 'Suppose now you should hear a step walking to and fro, leisurely, on the poop above you just suppose'; and the night of horrors which I had, for I could not help supposing, and at one time really thought that I heard it: and how the sweat rolled and poured from my brow; and how I went to Nagasaki, and burned it; and how I crossed over the great Pacific deep to San Francisco, for I knew that Chinamen had been there, too, and one of them might be alive; and how, one calm day, the 15th or the 16th April, I, sitting by the wheel in the mid-Pacific, suddenly saw a great white hole that ran and wheeled, and wheeled and ran, in the sea, coming toward me, and I was aware of the hot breath of a reeling wind, and then of the hot wind itself, which deep-groaned the sound of the letter V, humming like a billion spinning-tops, and the Speranza was on her side, sea pouring over her port-bulwarks, and myself in the corner between deck and taffrail, drowning fast, but unable to stir; but all was soon past and the white hole in the sea, and the hot spinning-top of wind, ran wheeling beyond, to the southern horizon, and the Speranza righted herself: so that it was clear that someone wished to destroy me, for that a typhoon of such vehemence ever blew before I cannot think; and how I came to San Francisco, and how I burned it, and had my sweets: for it was mine; and how I thought to pass over the great trans-continental railway to New York, but would not, fearing to leave the Speranza, lest all the ships in the harbour there should be wrecked, or rusted, and buried under sea-weed, and turned unto the sea; and how I went back, my mind all given up now to musings upon the earth and her ways, and a thought in my soul that I would return to those deep places of the Filipinas, and become an autochthone a tree, or a snake, or a man with snake-limbs, like the old autochthones: but I would not: for Heaven was in man, too: Earth and Heaven; and how as I steamed round west again, another winter come, and I now in a mood of dismal despondencies, on the very brink of the inane abyss and smiling idiotcy, I saw in the island of Java the great temple of Boro Budor: and like a tornado, or volcanic event, my soul was changed: for my recent studies in the architecture of the human race recurred to me with interest, and three nights I slept in the temple, examining it by day.
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