We learn incidentally, it would seem that the scanty population was chiefly distributed in small hamlets and isolated dwellings along the coast and up the course of the larger streams. To what we should call towns or villages very little reference is made anywhere in the "Records" or in that portion of the "Chronicles" which contains the account of the so-called "Divine Age." But from what In one passage of the "Records" and in another of the "Chronicles," mention is made of a "two-forked boat" used on inland pools or lakes but, as a rule, in the earlier portions of those works, we read only of people going to sea or being sent down from heaven in water-proof baskets without oars, and reaching their destination not through any efforts of their own, but through supernatural inter-position. Indeed the art of sailing was, as we know from the classical literature of the country, but little practised in Japan even so late as the middle of the tenth century of our era subsequent to the general diffusion of Chinese civilization, though rowing and punting are often mentioned by the early poets. Navigation seems to have been in a very elementary stage. With which they were manufactured, and there is the same remarkable silence regarding such widely spread domestic implements as the saw and the axe, We hear, however, of the pestle and fire-drill, of the wedge, of the sickle, and of the shuttle used in weaving. Of the bows and arrows, swords and knives, there is perpetual mention but nowhere do we hear of the tools Perhaps clubs should be added to the list.
Their other warlike and hunting implements (besides traps and gins, which appear to have been used equally for catching beasts and birds and for destroying human enemies) were bows and elbow-pads,-the latter seemingly of skin, while special allusion is made to the fact that the arrows were feathered. They used iron for manufacturing spears, swords, and knives of various shapes, and likewise for the more peaceful purpose of making hooks wherewith to angle, or to fasten the doors of their huts. The Stone Age was forgotten by them-or nearly so,-and the evidence points to their never having passed through a genuine Bronze Age, though the knowledge of bronze was at a later period introduced from the neighbouring continent. The Japanese of the mythical period, as pictured in the legends preserved by the compiler of the "Records of Ancient Matters," were a race who had long emerged from the savage state, and had attained to a high level of barbaric skill. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE EARLY JAPANESE. The Kojiki, translated by Basil Hall Chamberlain,, at Manners and Customs of the Early Japanese
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