Kuriles

Kuriles, a sparsely-populated group of islands, numbering twenty-six in all, and extending like a chain from the southern cape of Kamchatka to the eastern extremity of Yezo in Japan, to which empire they belong. By a treaty made with Russia in 1875 the Japanese surrendered claims on the southern part of Saghalien, and received in exchange the more northerly portion of the Kuriles. The largest islands of the group are Iturup and Kunashiri, frequently visited by seal-hunters. A migratory race of pit-dwellers, calling themselves Kurielsky Ainos, and numbering about sixty souls, is found on the islands, the remnant of a people which formerly inhabited Yezo (see Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. x. p. 190). With the exception of these pit-dwellers and a few Japanese and Aino families on the southern isles, the population remains in this misty and inhospitable region only during the summer, as long as the fishing season lasts.