Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/57

 adventurers, the nation has received them and cherishes them to this day as articles of a sacred faith.

The annals here briefly summarised reveal three tides of more or less civilised immigrants and a race of semi-barbarous autochthons. All the learned researches of modern archæologists and ethnologists do not teach us much more. It is now known with tolerable certainty that the so-called autochthons were composed of two swarms of colonists, both coming from Siberia, though their advents were separated by a long interval.

The first, archæologically indicated by pit-dwellings and shell-mounds still extant, were the Koro-pok-guru, or "cave-men." They are believed to be represented to-day by the inhabitants of Saghalien, the Kuriles and Southern Kamschatka.

The second were the Ainu, a flat-faced, heavy-jawed, hirsute people, who completely drove out their predecessors and took possession of the land. The Ainu of that period had much in common with animals. They burrowed in the ground for shelter; they recognised no distinctions of sex in apparel or of consanguinity in intercourse; they clad themselves in skins; they drank blood; they practised cannibalism; they were insensible to benefits and perpetually resentful of injuries; they resorted to savagely cruel forms of punishment,—severing the tendons of the leg, boiling the arms, slicing off the nose, etc.; they used stone im