Such sticks
are with the Gilyaks, as with the Aino, the regular symbols that
accompany all religious ceremonies.
When the house has been arranged and decorated for their reception,
the skins of the bears, with their heads attached to them, are
brought into it, not, however, by the door, but through a window,
and then hung on a sort of scaffold opposite the hearth on which the
flesh is to be cooked. The boiling of the bears' flesh among the
Gilyaks is done only by the oldest men, whose high privilege it is;
women and children, young men and boys have no part in it. The task
is performed slowly and deliberately, with a certain solemnity. On
the occasion described by the Russian travellers the kettle was
first of all surrounded with a thick wreath of shavings, and then
filled with snow, for the use of water to cook bear's flesh is
forbidden. Meanwhile a large wooden trough, richly adorned with
arabesques and carvings of all sorts, was hung immediately under the
snouts of the bears; on one side of the trough was carved in relief
a bear, on the other side a toad.
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