the head, but trim it semicircularly behind. The women tattoo their mouths, arms, and sometimes their foreheads, using for colour the smut deposited on a pot hung over a fire of birch bark. Their original dress is a robe spun from the bark of the elm tree. It has long sleeves, reaches nearly to the feet, is folded round the body and tied with a girdle of the same material. Females wear also an undergarment of Japanese cloth. In winter the skins of animals are worn, with leggings of deerskin and boots made from the skin of dogs or salmon. Both sexes are fond of ear-rings, which are said to have been made of grape-vine in former times, but are now purchased from the Japanese, as also are bead necklaces, which the women prize highly. Their food is meat, whenever they can procure it—the flesh of the bear, the fox, the wolf, the badger, the ox or the horse—fish, fowl, millet, vegetables, herbs and roots. They never eat raw fish or flesh, but always either boil or roast it. Their habitations are reed-thatched huts, the largest 20 ft. square, without partitions and having a fireplace in the centre. There is no chimney, but only a hole at the angle of the roof; there is one window on the eastern side and there are two doors. Public buildings do not exist, whether in the shape of inn, meeting-place or temple. The furniture of their dwellings is exceedingly scanty. They have no chairs, stools or tables, but sit on the floor, which is covered with two layers of mats, one of rush, the other of flag; and for beds they spread planks, hanging mats around them on poles, and employing skins for coverlets. The men use chop-sticks and moustache-lifters when eating; the women have wooden spoons. Uncleanliness is characteristic of the Ainu, and all their intercourse with the Japanese has not improved them in that respect. The Rev. John Batchelor, in his Notes on the Ainu, says that he lived in one Ainu habitation for six weeks on one occasion, and for two months on another, and that he never once saw personal ablutions performed, or cooking or eating utensils washed.
Not having been at any period acquainted with the art of writing, they have no literature and are profoundly ignorant. But at schools established for them by the Japanese in recent times, they have shown that their intellectual capacity is not deficient. No distinct conception of a universe enters into their cosmology. They picture to themselves many floating worlds, yet they deduce the idea of rotundity from the course of the sun, and they imagine that the “Ainu world” rests on the back of a fish whose movements cause earthquakes. It is scarcely possible to doubt that this fancy is derived from the Japanese, who used to hold an identical theory. The Ainu believe in a supreme Creator, but also in a sun-god, a moon-god, a water-god and a mountain-god, deities whose river is the Milky Way, whose voices are heard in the thunder and whose glory is reflected in the lightning. Their chief object of actual worship appears to be the bear. Miss Isabella Bird (Mrs Bishop) writes: “The peculiarity which distinguishes their rude mythology is the worship of the bear, the Yezo bear being one of the finest of his species. But it is impossible to understand the feelings by which this cult is prompted, for although they worship the animal after their fashion and set up its head in their villages, yet they trap it, kill it, eat it and sell its skin. There is no doubt that this wild beast inspires more of the feeling which prompts worship than the inanimate forces of nature, and the Ainos may be distinguished as bear-worshippers, and their greatest religious festival or saturnalia as the Festival of the Bear. . . . Some of their rude chants are in praise of the bear, and their highest eulogy on a man is to compare him to a bear.” They have no priests by profession. The village chief performs whatever religious ceremonies are necessary; ceremonies confined to making libations of wine, uttering short prayers and offering willow sticks with wooden shavings attached to them, much as the Japanese set up the well-known gohei (sacred offerings) at certain spots. The Ainu gives thanks to the gods before eating, and prays to the deity of fire in time of sickness. He thinks that his spirit is immortal, and that it will be rewarded hereafter in heaven or punished in hell, both of which places are beneath the earth, hell being the land of volcanoes; but he has no theory as to a resurrection of the body or metempsychosis. He preserves a tradition about a flood which seems to be the counterpart of the Biblical deluge, and about an earthquake which lasted a hundred days, produced the three volcanoes of Yezo and created the island by bridging the waters that had previously separated it into two parts.
The Ainu are now governed by Japanese laws and judged by Japanese tribunals, but in former times their affairs were administered by hereditary chiefs, three in each village, and for administrative purposes the country was divided into three districts, Saru, Usu and Ishikari, which were under the ultimate control of Saru, though the relations between their respective inhabitants were not close and intermarriages were avoided. The functions of judge were not entrusted to these chiefs; an indefinite number of a community’s members sat in judgment upon its criminals. Capital punishment did not exist, nor was imprisonment resorted to, beating being considered a sufficient and final penalty, except in the case of murder, when the nose and ears of the assassin were cut off or the tendons of his feet severed. Little as the Japanese and the Ainu have in common, intermarriages are not infrequent, and at Sambutsu especially, on the eastern coast, many children of such marriages may be seen. Doenitz, Hilgendorf and Dr B. Scheube, arguing from a minute investigation of the physical traits of the Ainu, have concluded that they are Mongolians; according to Professor A. H. Keane the Ainu “are quite distinct from the surrounding Mongolic peoples, and present several remarkable physical characters which seem to point to a remote connexion with the Caucasic races. Such are a very full beard, shaggy or wavy black or dark-brown hair, sometimes covering the back and chest; a somewhat fair or even white complexion, large nose, straight eyes and regular features, often quite handsome and of European type. They seem to be a last remnant of the Neolithic peoples, who ranged in prehistoric times across the northern hemisphere from the British Isles to Manchuria and Japan. They are bear-worshippers, and have other customs in common with the Manchurian aborigines, but the language is entirely different, and they have traditions of a time when they were the dominant people in the surrounding lands.” It should be noted finally that the Ainu are altogether free from ferocity or exclusiveness, and that they treat strangers with gentle kindness.
See Rev. John Batchelor, The Ainu and their Folk-lore (London, 1901); Romyn Hitchcock, The Ainos of Japan (Washington, 1892); H. von Siebold, Über die Aino (Berlin, 1881); Isabella Bird (Mrs Bishop), Korea and her Neighbours (1898); Basil Hall Chamberlain, Language, Mythology and Geographical Nomenclature of Japan viewed in the Light of Aino Studies and Aino Fairy-tales (1895).
AIR, or Asben, a country of West Africa, lying between 15° and 19° N. and 6° and 10° E. It is within the Sahara, of which it forms one of the most fertile regions. The northern portion of the country is mountainous, some of the peaks rising to a height of 5000 ft. Richly wooded hollows and extensive plains are interspersed between the hills. The mimosa, the dum palm and the date are abundant. Some of the plains afford good pasturage for camels, asses, goats and cattle; others are desert tablelands. In the less frequented districts wild animals abound, notably the lion and the gazelle. The country generally is of sandstone or granite formation, with occasional trachyte and basaltic ranges. There are no permanent rivers; but during the rainy season, from August to October, heavy floods convert the water-courses in the hollows of the mountains into broad and rapid streams. Numerous wells supply the wants of the people and their cattle. To the south of this variegated region lies a desert plateau, 2000 ft. above sea-level, destitute of water, and tenanted only by the wild ox, the ostrich and the giraffe. Still farther south is the fairly fertile district of Damerghu, of which Zinder is the chief town. Little of the soil is under cultivation except in the neighbourhood of the villages. Millet, dates, indigo and senna are the principal productions. The great bulk of the food supplies is brought from Damerghu, and the materials for clothing are also imported. A great caravan annually passes through Air, consisting of several thousand camels, carrying salt from Bilma to the Hausa states.
Air was called Asben by the native tribes until they were conquered by the Berbers. The present inhabitants are for the most part of a mixed race, combining the finer traits of the
