Again, as he was making his progress through the country Prince Jimmu came upon a company of the savages known as pit-dwellers,(48) whom the _Kojiki_ calls earth-spiders, and describes them as having tails. There appear to have existed at this period remnants of these tribes as far south as the 35th parallel. At a later period they were driven out by the Ainos, and nothing but some of their relics now exists, even in Yezo. The peculiarity by which they were known was, that they lived in a sort of pit dug out of the earth in the sides of the mountains, over which they built a roof of limbs and grass. In the present case there were eighty of the warriors of this tribe. Prince Jimmu made a banquet for them in one of their pits and assigned an equal number of his own men to act as attendants. Each of these attendants was girded with a sword. Then from a post outside he sang a song,(49) and at a given signal in this song the eighty attendants fell upon the eighty earth-spiders and slew them all. Thus having subdued all opposing forces and brought the country into subjection, Prince Jimmu established himself in a palace built for him at Kashiwara in the province of Yamato. This is usually regarded by Japanese historians as the beginning of the empire, and the present era(50) is reckoned from this establishment of a capital in Yamato. From the record of the length of the reigns of the several emperors contained in the _Kojiki_, and the _Nihongi_, and later books, the date of the accession of the Emperor Jimmu is fixed at 660 B.C. We have given elsewhere(51) our reason for believing the record of the early reigns of doubtful authenticity. Nevertheless, as it is impossible to propose a definite change, it is better to use the accepted scheme with its admitted defects.