"Before funerals the Aino puts on a new coat made of fine bark. The Smerenkow burns the body and collects the ashes which are kept in a little chapel, makes offerings to the presiding idol, and covers with branches the spot where the body was consumed. They erect stakes in honour of the defunct, from the wood of the house, which is always pulled down. Bodies of the rich receive honours of a different kind: they are embalmed, filled with odoriferous herbs, and dried during a year, then placed in a sepulchre, where they are annually visited by their relatives. Yet the Aino have no calendar and reckon time by the fall of the leaf. They have neither letters nor money. They apply two remedies in case of all sickness, a '_boletus laricis_' and the root _ikeme_, supposed to be a sort of _asclepias_."[100] Two statements have been made concerning the Aino, which are curious if true. 1. That of all men they are the most covered with hair; even their backs being covered with it. I am inclined to class this with the tails of the Nicobar islanders. 2. That they ride upon bears; which the females suckle when young, and so tame; a fact, when verified, of equal novelty in zoology and ethnography. The Peninsula of Sagalin, and the island of Jesso are the probable lines by which Japan was peopled; at least so far as the simple land-and-water conditions are concerned. And I know nothing that counteracts them. _The Kachhall._--This is a tribe mentioned by Von Middenorf as inhabiting the south bank of the Amur. He knows it, however, only from the description given by the Ainos. Their stature is short; the lower extremities disproportionately so. THE KORIAKS. _Present area._--The parts between the Omolon, an eastern branch of the Kolyma, the Arctic Ocean, Behring's Straits, and the Gulf of Anadyr, except only a tract of coast in the two latter localities, inhabited by the _Namollos_. Southwards, to the middle of the Peninsula of Kamskatka, across the northern portion of which it extends. The head of the Gulf of Penjinsk, in the Sea of Okhotsk. Conterminous with the Yukahiri, Lamut Tungusians, Kamskadales, and Namollos. _Supposed ancient area._--As far west as the Kolyma, possibly farther. Probably also farther south. On the other hand, _not_ so far east as at present; the Namollos being believed to have extended so far as Shelagskoi Noss. _Divisions._--_a._ Northern Koriaks, or Tshuktshi; _b._ Southern Koriaks, or Koræki. The two divisions separated by the river Anadyr. _Habits._--Nomadic. _Kora_, which is said to mean a rein-deer, is held to be the root of the term Koræki, a name which, for the southern Koriaks, is stated to be indigenous. _Religion._--Shamanism. In some cases an imperfect Christianity. _Political relations._--The Southern Koriaks tributary to Russia; the Northern, (or Tshuktshi) independent.