KOREA, AND HER NEIGHBORS


[Illustration: MRS. BISHOP’S TRAVELING PARTY.]




  KOREA
  And Her Neighbors

  A Narrative of Travel, with
  an Account of the Recent
  Vicissitudes and Present
  Position of the Country

  By

  Isabella Bird Bishop, F.R.G.S.

  _Author of “Unbeaten Tracks in Japan,” etc._

  With a Preface by

  Sir Walter C. Hillier, K.C.M.G.

  _Late British Consul-General for Korea_


  With Illustrations from Photographs by the Author,
  and Maps, Appendixes and Index

  [Illustration]


  NEW YORK      CHICAGO      TORONTO
  Fleming H. Revell Company
  M DCCC XCVIII


  Copyright 1897

  BY

  FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY




Preface.


I have been honored by Mrs. Bishop with an invitation to preface her
book on Korea with a few introductory remarks.

Mrs. Bishop is too well-known as a traveler and a writer to require
any introduction to the reading public, but I am glad to be afforded
an opportunity of indorsing the conclusions she has arrived at after
a long and intimate study of a people whose isolation during many
centuries renders a description of their character, institutions and
peculiarities, especially interesting at the present stage of their
history.

Those who, like myself, have known Korea from its first opening to
foreign intercourse will thoroughly appreciate the closeness of Mrs.
Bishop’s observation, the accuracy of her facts, and the correctness of
her inferences. The facilities enjoyed by her have been exceptional.
She has been honored by the confidence and friendship of the King and
the late Queen in a degree that has never before been accorded to any
foreign traveler, and has had access to valuable sources of information
placed at her disposal by the foreign community of Seoul, official,
missionary, and mercantile; while her presence in the country during
and subsequent to the war between China and Japan, of which Korea was,
in the first instance, the stage, has furnished her the opportunity of
recording with accuracy and impartiality many details of an episode in
far Eastern history which have hitherto been clouded by misstatement
and exaggeration. The hardships and difficulties encountered by Mrs.
Bishop during her journeys into the interior of Korea have been lightly
touched upon by herself; but those who know how great they were,
admire the courage, patience and endurance that enabled her to overcome
them.

It must be evident to all who know anything of Korea that a condition
of tutelage, in some form or another, is now absolutely necessary to
her existence as a nation. The nominal independence won for her by
the force of Japanese arms is a privilege she is not fitted to enjoy
while she continues to labor under the burden of an administration
that is hopelessly and superlatively corrupt. The _role_ of mentor
and guide exercised by China, with that lofty indifference to local
interests that characterizes her treatment of all her tributaries, was
undertaken by Japan after the expulsion of the Chinese armies from
Korea. The efforts of the Japanese to reform some of the most glaring
abuses, though somewhat roughly applied, were undoubtedly earnest and
genuine; but, as Mrs. Bishop has shown, experience was wanting, and
one of the Japanese Agents did incalculable harm to his country’s
cause by falling a victim to the spirit of intrigue which seems almost
inseparable from the diplomacy of Orientals. Force of circumstances
compelled Russia to take up the task begun by Japan, the King having
appealed in his desperation to the Russian Representative for rescue
from a terrorism which might well have cowed a stronger and a braver
man. The most partial of critics will admit that the powerful influence
which the presence of the King in the house of their Representative
might have enabled the Russian Government to exert has been exercised
through their Minister with almost disappointing moderation.
Nevertheless, through the instrumentality of Mr. M’Leavy Brown, LL.D.,
head of the Korean Customs and Financial Adviser to the Government,
an Englishman whose great ability as an organizer and administrator
is recognized by all residents in the farther East, the finances of
the country have been placed in a condition of equilibrium that has
never before existed; while numerous other reforms have been carried
out by Mr. Brown and others with the cordial support and co-operation
of the Russian Minister, irrespective of the nationality of the agent
employed.

Much, however, still remains to be done; and the only hope of advance
in the direction of progress--initiated, it is only fair to remember,
by Japan, and continued under Russian auspices--is to maintain an iron
grip, which the Russian Agents, so far, have been more careful than
their Japanese predecessors to conceal beneath a velvet glove. The
condition of Korean settlers in Russian territory described by Mrs.
Bishop shows how capable these people are of improving their condition
under wise and paternal rule; and, setting all political considerations
aside, there can be no doubt that the prosperity of the people and
their general comfort and happiness would be immensely advanced under
an extension of this patronage by one or other civilized Power. Without
some form of patronage or control, call it by what name we will, a
lapse into the old groove of oppression, extortion, and its concomitant
miseries, is inevitable.

Mrs. Bishop’s remarks on missionary work in China and Korea, based,
as they are, on personal and sympathetic observation, will be found
of great value to those who are anxious to arrive at a correct
appreciation of Christian enterprise in these remote regions.
Descriptions of missionaries and their doings are too often marred
by exaggerations of success on the one hand, which are, perhaps,
the natural outcome of enthusiasm, and harsh and frequently unjust
criticisms on the other, commonly indulged in by those who base
their conclusions upon observation of the most superficial kind.
Speaking from my own experience, I have no hesitation in saying that
closer inquiry would dispel many of the illusions about the futility
of missionary work that are, unfortunately, too common; and that
missionaries would, as a rule, welcome sympathetic inquiry into
their methods of work, which most of them will frankly admit to be
capable of improvement. But, while courting friendly criticism, they
may reasonably object to be judged by those who have never taken the
trouble to study their system, or to interest themselves in the objects
they have in view. In Mrs. Bishop they have an advocate whose testimony
may be commended to the attention of all who are disposed to regard
missionary labor as, at the best, useless or unnecessary. In Korea,
at all events, to go no farther, it is to missionaries that we are
assuredly indebted for almost all we know about the country; it is they
who have awakened in the people the desire for material progress and
enlightenment that has now happily taken root, and it is to them that
we may confidently look for assistance in its farther development.
The unacknowledged, but none the less complete, religious toleration
that now exists throughout the country affords them facilities which
are being energetically used with great promise of future success. I
am tempted to call attention to another point in connection with this
much-abused class of workers that is, I think, often lost sight of,
namely, their utility as explorers and pioneers of commerce. They are
always ready--at least such has been my invariable experience--to place
the stores of their local knowledge at the disposal of any one, whether
merchant, sportsman, or traveler, who applies to them for information,
and to lend him cheerful assistance in the pursuit of his objects. I
venture to think that much valuable information as to channels for the
development of trade could be obtained by Chambers of Commerce if they
were to address specific inquiries to missionaries in remote regions.
Manufacturers are more indebted to missionaries than perhaps they
realize for the introduction of their goods and wares, and the creation
of a demand for them, in places to which such would never otherwise
have found their way.

It is fortunate that Mrs. Bishop’s visit to Korea was so opportunely
timed. At the present rate of progress much that came under her
observation will, before long, be “improved” out of existence; and
though no one can regret the disappearance of many institutions and
customs that have nothing but their antiquity to recommend them, she
has done valuable service in placing on record so graphic a description
of experiences that future travelers will probably look for in vain.

  WALTER C. HILLIER.

 _October, 1897._




Author’s Prefatory Note.


My four visits to Korea, between January, 1894, and March, 1897, formed
part of a plan of study of the leading characteristics of the Mongolian
races. My first journey produced the impression that Korea is the most
uninteresting country I ever traveled in, but during and since the war
its political perturbations, rapid changes, and possible destinies,
have given me an intense interest in it; while Korean character and
industry, as I saw both under Russian rule in Siberia, have enlightened
me as to the better possibilities which may await the nation in the
future. Korea takes a similarly strong grip on all who reside in it
sufficiently long to overcome the feeling of distaste which at first it
undoubtedly inspires.

It is a difficult country to write upon, from the lack of books of
reference by means of which one may investigate what one hopes are
facts, the two best books on the country having become obsolete within
the last few years in so far as its political condition and social
order are concerned. The traveler must laboriously disinter each fact
for himself, usually through the medium of an interpreter; and as
five or six versions of each are given by apparently equally reliable
authorities, frequently the “teachers” of the foreigners, the only
course is to hazard a bold guess as to which of them has the best
chance of being accurate.

Accuracy has been my first aim, and my many foreign friends in Korea
know how industriously I have labored to attain it. It is by these,
who know the extreme difficulty of the task, that I shall be the most
leniently criticised wherever, in spite of carefulness, I have fallen
into mistakes.

Circumstances prevented me from putting my traveling experiences, as
on former occasions, into letters. I took careful notes, which were
corrected from time to time by the more prolonged observations of
residents, and as I became better acquainted with the country; but,
with regard to my journey up the South Branch of the Han, as I am
the first traveler who has reported on the region, I have to rely on
my observation and inquiries alone, and there is the same lack of
recorded notes on most of the country on the Upper Tai-döng. My notes
furnish the travel chapters, as well as those on Seoul, Manchuria, and
Primorsk; and the sketches in contemporary Korean history are based
partly on official documents, and are partly derived from sources not
usually accessible.

I owe very much to the kindly interest which my friends in Korea took
in my work, and to the encouragement which they gave me when I was
disheartened by the difficulties of the subject and my own lack of
skill. I gratefully acknowledge the invaluable help given me by Sir
Walter C. Hillier, K.C.M.G., H.B.M.’s Consul-General in Korea, and Mr.
J. M’Leavy Brown, LL.D., Chief Commissioner of Korean Customs; also
the aid generously bestowed by Mr. Waeber, the Russian Minister, and
the Rev. G. Heber Jones, the Rev. James Gale, and other missionaries.
I am also greatly indebted to a learned and careful volume on _Korean
Government_, by Mr. W. H. Wilkinson, H.B.M.’s Acting Vice-Consul
at Chemulpo, as well as to the _Korean Repository_ and the _Seoul
Independent_, for information which has enabled me to correct some of
my notes on Korean customs.

Various repetitions occur, for the reason that it appears to me
impossible to give sufficient emphasis to certain facts without them;
and several descriptions are loaded with details, the result of an
attempt to fix on paper customs and ceremonies destined shortly to
disappear. The illustrations, with the exceptions of three, are
reproductions of my own photographs. The sketch map, in so far as my
first journey is concerned, is reduced from one kindly drawn for me
by Mr. Waeber. The transliteration of Chinese proper names was kindly
undertaken by a well-known Chinese scholar, but unfortunately the
actual Chinese characters were not in all cases forthcoming. In justice
to the kind friends who have so generously aided me, I am anxious to
claim and accept the fullest measure of personal responsibility for the
opinions expressed, which, whether right or wrong, are wholly my own.

I am painfully conscious of the demerits of this work, but believing
that, on the whole, it reflects fairly faithfully the regions of which
it treats, I venture to present it to the public; and to ask for it
the same kindly and lenient criticism with which my records of travel
in the East and elsewhere have hitherto been received, and that it may
be accepted as an honest attempt to make a contribution to the sum of
the knowledge of Korea and its people, and to describe things as I saw
them, not only in the interior but in the troubled political atmosphere
of the capital.

  ISABELLA L. BISHOP.

 _November, 1897._




Contents


   CHAPTER                                        PAGE

          INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER                      11

       I. FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF KOREA                23

      II. FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE CAPITAL          35

     III. THE KUR-DONG                              49

      IV. SEOUL, THE KOREAN MECCA                   59

       V. THE SAILING OF THE SAMPAN                 66

      VI. ON THE RIVER OF GOLDEN SAND               71

     VII. VIEWS AFLOAT                              82

    VIII. NATURAL BEAUTY--THE RAPIDS                98

      IX. KOREAN MARRIAGE CUSTOMS                  114

       X. THE KOREAN PONY--KOREAN ROADS AND INNS   121

      XI. DIAMOND MOUNTAIN MONASTERIES             133

     XII. ALONG THE COAST                          150

    XIII. IMPENDING WAR--EXCITEMENT AT CHEMULPO    177

     XIV. DEPORTED TO MANCHURIA                    185

      XV. A MANCHURIAN DELUGE--A PASSENGER CART--AN
            ACCIDENT                               192

     XVI. MUKDEN AND ITS MISSIONS                  199

    XVII. CHINESE TROOPS ON THE MARCH              206

   XVIII. NAGASAKI--WLADIVOSTOK                    213

     XIX. KOREAN SETTLERS IN SIBERIA               223

      XX. THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILROAD              239

     XXI. THE KING’S OATH--AN AUDIENCE             245

    XXII. A TRANSITION STAGE                       261

   XXIII. THE ASSASSINATION OF THE QUEEN           269

    XXIV. BURIAL CUSTOMS                           283

     XXV. SONG-DO: A ROYAL CITY                    292

    XXVI. THE PHYONG-YANG BATTLEFIELD              301

   XXVII. NORTHWARD HO!                            320

  XXVIII. OVER THE AN-KIL YUNG PASS                330

    XXIX. SOCIAL POSITION OF WOMEN                 338

     XXX. EXORCISTS AND DANCING WOMEN              344

    XXXI. THE HAIR-CROPPING EDICT                  359

   XXXII. THE REORGANIZED KOREAN GOVERNMENT        371

  XXXIII. EDUCATION AND FOREIGN TRADE              387

   XXXIV. DÆMONISM OR SHAMANISM                    399

    XXXV. NOTES ON DÆMONISM CONCLUDED              409

   XXXVI. SEOUL IN 1897                            427

  XXXVII. LAST WORDS ON KOREA                      445

          APPENDIXES                               461

            APPENDIX A.--MISSION STATISTICS FOR KOREA 1896.

            APPENDIX B.--DIRECT FOREIGN TRADE OF KOREA
              1886-95.

            APPENDIX C.--RETURN OF PRINCIPAL ARTICLES OF
              EXPORT FOR THE YEARS 1896-95.

            APPENDIX D.--POPULATION OF TREATY PORTS.

            APPENDIX E.--TREATY BETWEEN JAPAN AND RUSSIA,
              WITH REPLY OF H.E., THE KOREAN MINISTER
              FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS.

          INDEX                                    475




List of Illustrations.


                                                             PAGE

  MRS. BISHOP’S TRAVELING PARTY                    _Frontispiece_

  HARBOR OF CHEMULPO                                 _Facing_  30

  GATE OF OLD FUSAN                                            34

  JAPANESE MILITARY CEMETERY, CHEMULPO               _Facing_  38

  TURTLE STONE                                                 48

  GUTTER SHOP, SEOUL                                 _Facing_  60

  THE AUTHOR’S SAMPAN, HAN RIVER                     _Facing_  66

  KOREAN PEASANTS AT DINNER                                    81

  A KOREAN LADY                                               120

  THE DIAMOND MOUNTAINS                              _Facing_ 140

  TOMBSTONES OF ABBOTS, YU-CHÖM SA                   _Facing_ 146

  PASSENGER CART, MUKDEN                                      198

  TEMPLE OF GOD OF LITERATURE, MUKDEN                _Facing_ 200

  GATE OF VICTORY, MUKDEN                            _Facing_ 208

  CHINESE SOLDIERS                                   _Facing_ 210

  WLADIVOSTOK                                        _Facing_ 214

  RUSSIAN “ARMY,” KRASNOYE CELO                      _Facing_ 232

  KOREAN SETTLER’S HOUSE                                      238

  KOREAN THRONE                                      _Facing_ 248

  SUMMER PAVILION, OR “HALL OF CONGRATULATIONS”      _Facing_ 254

  ROYAL LIBRARY, KYENG-POK PALACE                    _Facing_ 256

  KOREAN GENTLEMAN IN COURT DRESS                             260

  PLACE OF THE QUEEN’S CREMATION                              268

  CHIL-SUNG MON, SEVEN STAR GATE                              300

  ALTAR AT TOMB OF KIT-ZE                            _Facing_ 318

  RUSSIAN SETTLER’S HOUSE                            _Facing_ 320

  UPPER TAI-DÖNG                                     _Facing_ 324

  RUSSIAN OFFICERS, HUN-CHUN                         _Facing_ 330

  SOUTH GATE                                         _Facing_ 412

  SEOUL AND PALACE ENCLOSURE                         _Facing_ 428

  THE KING OF KOREA                                  _Facing_ 430

  KOREAN CADET CORPS AND RUSSIAN DRILL INSTRUCTORS            434

  A STREET IN SEOUL                                  _Facing_ 436

  KOREAN POLICEMEN, OLD AND NEW                               444


[Illustration: GENERAL MAP OF KOREA AND NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES

  The Edinburgh Geographical Institute      John Bartholomew & Co.

Fleming H. Revell Company.]




Korea and Her Neighbors




INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER


In the winter of 1894, when I was about to sail for Korea (to
which some people erroneously give the name of “The Korea”), many
interested friends hazarded guesses at its position,--the Equator, the
Mediterranean, and the Black Sea being among them, a hazy notion that
it is in the Greek Archipelago cropping up frequently. It was curious
that not one of these educated, and, in some cases, intelligent people
came within 2,000 miles of its actual latitude and longitude!

In truth, there is something about this peninsula which has repelled
investigation, and until lately, when the establishment of a monthly
periodical, carefully edited, _The Korean Repository_, has stimulated
research, the one authority of which all writers, with and without
acknowledgment, have availed themselves, is the Introduction to Père
Dallet’s _Histoire de l’Église de Korée_, a valuable treatise, many
parts of which, however, are now obsolete.

If in this volume I present facts so elementary as to provoke the
scornful comment, “Every schoolboy knows that,” I venture to remind
my critics that the larger number of possible readers were educated
when Korea was little more than “a geographical expression,” and
had not the advantages of the modern schoolboy, whose “up-to-date”
geographical text-books have been written since the treaties of 1883
opened the Hermit Nation to the world; and I will ask the minority to
be patient with what may be to them “twice-told tales” for the sake of
the majority, specially in this introduction, which is intended to give
something of lucidity to the chapters which follow.

The first notice of Korea is by Khordadbeh, an Arab geographer of the
ninth century, A.D., in his _Book of Roads and Provinces_, quoted by
Baron Richofen in his work on China, p. 575. Legends of the aboriginal
inhabitants of the peninsula are too mythical to be noticed here, but
it is certain that it was inhabited when Kit-ze or Ki-ja, who will be
referred to later, introduced the elements of Chinese civilization
in the twelfth century B.C. Naturally that conquest and subsequent
immigrations from Manchuria have left some traces on the Koreans, but
they are strikingly dissimilar from both their nearest neighbors,
the Chinese and the Japanese, and there is a remarkable variety
of physiognomy among them, all the more noticeable because of the
uniformity of costume. The difficulty of identifying people which
besets and worries the stranger in Japan and China does not exist in
Korea. It is true that the obliquity of the Mongolian eye is always
present, as well as a trace of bronze in the skin, but the complexion
varies from a swarthy olive to a very light brunette.

There are straight and aquiline noses, as well as broad and snub noses
with distended nostrils; and though the hair is dark, much of it is so
distinctly a russet brown as to require the frequent application of
lampblack and oil to bring it to a fashionable black, while in texture
it varies from wiriness to silkiness. Some men have full moustaches and
large goatees, on the faces of others a few carefully tended hairs, as
in China, do duty for both, while many have full, strong beards. The
mouth is either the wide, full-lipped, gaping cavity constantly seen
among the lower orders, or a small though full feature, or thin-lipped
and refined, as is seen continually among patricians.

The eyes, though dark, vary from dark brown to hazel; the cheek bones
are high; the brow, so far as fashion allows it to be seen, is
frequently lofty and intellectual; and the ears are small and well set
on. The usual expression is cheerful, with a dash of puzzlement. The
physiognomy indicates, in its best aspect, quick intelligence, rather
than force or strength of will. The Koreans are certainly a handsome
race.

The physique is good. The average height of the men is five feet four
and a half[1] inches, that of the women cannot be ascertained, and is
_dis_proportionately less, while their figureless figures, the faults
of which are exaggerated by the ugliest dress on earth, are squat
and broad. The hands and feet of both sexes and all classes are very
small, white, and exquisitely formed, and the tapering, almond-shaped
finger-nails are carefully attended to. The men are very strong, and
as porters carry heavy weights, a load of 100 pounds being regarded as
a moderate one. They walk remarkably well, whether it be the studied
swing of the patrician or the short, firm stride of the plebeian when
on business. The families are large and healthy. If the Government
estimate of the number of houses is correct, the population, taking a
fair average, is from twelve to thirteen millions, females being in the
minority.

Mentally the Koreans are liberally endowed, specially with that
gift known in Scotland as “gleg at the uptak.” The foreign teachers
bear willing testimony to their mental adroitness and quickness of
perception, and their talent for the rapid acquisition of languages,
which they speak more fluently and with a far better accent than either
the Chinese or Japanese. They have the Oriental vices of suspicion,
cunning, and untruthfulness, and trust between man and man is unknown.
Women are secluded, and occupy a very inferior position.

The geography of Korea, or Ch’ao Hsien (“Morning Calm,” or “Fresh
Morning”), is simple. It is a definite peninsula to the northeast of
China, measuring roughly 600 miles from north to south and 135 from
east to west. The coast line is about 1,740 miles. It lies between 34°
17′ N. to 43° N. latitude and 124° 38′ E. to 130° 33′ E. longitude, and
has an estimated area of upwards of 80,000 square miles, being somewhat
smaller than Great Britain. Bounded on the north and west by the
Tu-men and Am-nok, or Yalu, rivers, which divide it from the Russian
and Chinese empires, and by the Yellow Sea, its eastern and southern
limit is the Sea of Japan, a “silver streak,” which has not been its
salvation. Its northern frontier is only conterminous with that of
Russia for 11 miles.

Both boundary rivers rise in Paik-tu San, the “White-Headed Mountain,”
from which runs southwards a great mountain range, throwing off
numerous lateral spurs, itself a rugged spine which divides the
kingdom into two parts, the eastern division being a comparatively
narrow strip between the range and the Sea of Japan, difficult of
access, but extremely fertile; while the western section is composed
of rugged hills and innumerable rich valleys and slopes, well watered
and admirably suited for agriculture. Craters of volcanoes, long since
passed into repose, lava beds, and other signs of volcanic action, are
constantly met with.

The lakes are few and very small, and not many of the streams are
navigable for more than a few miles from the sea, the exceptions
being the noble Am-nok, the Tai-döng, the Nak-tong, the Mok-po, and
the Han, which last, rising in Kang-wön Do, 30 miles from the Sea of
Japan, after cutting the country nearly in half, falls into the sea at
Chemulpo on the west coast, and, in spite of many and dangerous rapids,
is a valuable highway for commerce for over 170 miles.

Owing to the configuration of the peninsula there are few good harbors,
but those which exist are open all the winter. The finest are Fusan
and Wön-san, on Broughton Bay. Chemulpo, which, as the port of Seoul,
takes the first place, can hardly be called a harbor at all, the “outer
harbor,” where large vessels and ships of war lie, being nothing better
than a roadstead, and the “inner harbor,” close to the town, in the
fierce tideway of the estuary of the Han, is only available for five
or six vessels of small tonnage at a time. The east coast is steep and
rocky, the water is deep, and the tide rises and falls from 1 to 2 feet
only. On the southwest and west coasts the tide rises and falls from 26
to 38 feet!

Off the latter coasts there is a remarkable archipelago. Some of the
islands are bold masses of arid rock, the resort of seafowl; others
are arable and inhabited, while the actual coast fringes off into
innumerable islets, some of which are immersed by the spring tides. In
the channels scoured among these by the tremendous rush of the tide,
navigation is ofttimes dangerous. Great mud-banks, specially near the
mouths of the rivers, render parts of the coast-line dubious.

Korea is decidedly a mountainous country, and has few plains deserving
the name. In the north there are mountain groups with definite centres,
the most remarkable being Paik-tu San, which attains an altitude
of over 8,000 feet, and is regarded as sacred. Farther south these
settle into a definite range, following the coast-line at a moderate
distance, and throwing out so many ranges and spurs to the west as to
break up northern and central Korea into a congeries of corrugated and
precipitous hills, either denuded or covered with _chapparal_, and
narrow, steep-sided valleys, each furnished with a stony stream. The
great axial range, which includes the “Diamond Mountain,” a region
containing exquisite mountain and sylvan scenery, falls away as it
descends towards the southern coast, disintegrating in places into
small and often infertile plains.

The geological formation is fairly simple. Mesozoic rocks occur in
Hwang-hai Do, but granite and metamorphic rocks largely predominate.
Northeast of Seoul are great fields of lava, and lava and volcanic
rocks are of common occurrence in the north.

The climate is undoubtedly one of the finest and healthiest in the
world. Foreigners are not afflicted by any climatic maladies, and
European children can be safely brought up in every part of the
peninsula. July, August, and sometimes the first half of September,
are hot and rainy, but the heat is so tempered by sea breezes that
exercise is always possible. For nine months of the year the skies are
generally bright, and a Korean winter is absolutely superb, with its
still atmosphere, its bright, blue, unclouded sky, its extreme dryness
without asperity, and its crisp, frosty nights. From the middle of
September till the end of June, there are neither extremes of heat nor
cold to guard against.

The summer mean temperature at Seoul is about 75° Fahrenheit, that of
the winter about 33°; the average rainfall 36.03 inches in the year,
and the average of the rainy season 21.86 inches.[2] July is the
wettest month, and December the driest. The result of the abundant
rainfall, distributed fairly through the necessitous months of the
year, is that irrigation is necessary only for the rice crop.

The fauna of Korea is considerable, and includes tigers and leopards
in great numbers, bears, antelopes, at least seven species of deer,
foxes, beavers, otters, badgers, tiger-cats, pigs, several species of
marten, a sable (not of much value, however), and striped squirrels.
Among birds there are black eagles, found even near Seoul, harriers,
peregrines (largely used for hawking), pheasants, swans, geese,
spectacled and common teal, mallards, mandarin ducks, turkey buzzards
(very shy), white and pink ibis, sparrow-hawks, kestrels, imperial
cranes, egrets, herons, curlews, night-jars, redshanks, buntings,
magpies (common and blue), orioles, wood larks, thrushes, redstarts,
crows, pigeons, doves, rooks, warblers, wagtails, cuckoos, halcyon
and bright blue kingfishers, jays, snipes, nut-hatches, gray shrikes,
pheasants, hawks, and kites. But until more careful observations have
been made it is impossible to say which of the smaller birds actually
breed in Korea, and which make it only a halting-place in their annual
migrations.

The denudation of the hills in the neighborhood of Seoul, the coasts,
the treaty ports, and the main roads, is impressive, and helps to give
a very unfavorable idea of the country. It is to the dead alone that
the preservation of anything deserving the name of timber in much of
southern Korea is owing. But in the mountains of the northern and
eastern provinces, and specially among those which enclose the sources
of the Tu-men, the Am-nok, the Tai-döng, and the Han, there are very
considerable forests, on which up to this time the woodcutter has made
little apparent impression, though a good deal of timber is annually
rafted down these rivers.

Among the indigenous trees are the _Abies excelsa_, _Abies
microsperma_, _Pinus sinensis_, _Pinus pinea_, three species of
oak, the lime, ash, birch, five species of maple, the _Acanthopanax
ricinifolia_, _Rhus semipinnata_, _Elæagnus_, juniper, mountain
ash, hazel, _Thuja Orientalis_ (?), willow, _Sophora Japonica_
(?), hornbeam, plum, peach, _Euonymus alatus_, etc. The flora is
extensive and interesting, but, with the exception of the azalea and
rhododendron, it lacks brilliancy of color. There are several varieties
of showy clematis, and the _mille-fleur_ rose smothers even large
trees, but the climber _par excellence_ of Korea is the _Ampelopsis
Veitchii_. The economic plants are few, and, with the exception of the
_Panax quinquefolia_ (ginseng), the wild roots of which are worth $15
per ounce, are of no commercial value.

The mineral wealth of Korea is a vexed question. Probably between
the view of the country as an El Dorado and the scepticism as to the
existence of underground treasure at all, the mean lies. Gold is
little used for personal ornaments or in the arts, yet the Korean
declares that the dust of his country is gold; and the unquestionable
authority of a Customs’ report states that gold dust to the amount
of $1,360,279 was exported in 1896, and that it is probable that
the quantity which left the country undeclared was at least as much
again. Silver and galena are found, copper is fairly plentiful, and
the country is rich in undeveloped iron and coal mines, the coal being
of excellent quality. The gold-bearing quartz has never been touched,
but an American Company, having obtained a concession, has introduced
machinery, and has gone to work in the province of Phyöng-an.

The manufactures are unimportant. The best productions are paper of
several qualities made from the _Brousonettia Papyrifera_, among which
is an oiled paper, like vellum in appearance, and so tough that a man
can be raised from the ground on a sheet of it, lifted at the four
corners, fine grass mats, and split bamboo blinds.

The arts are _nil_.

Korea, or Ch’ao Hsien, has been ruled by kings of the present dynasty
since 1392. The monarchy is hereditary, and though some modifications
in a constitutional direction were made during the recent period of
Japanese ascendency, the sovereign is still practically absolute,
his edicts, as in China, constituting law. The suzerainty of China,
recognized since very remote days, was personally renounced by the
king at the altar of the Spirits of the Land in January, 1895, and
the complete independence of Korea was acknowledged by China in the
treaty of peace signed at Shimonoseki in May of the same year. There
is a Council of State composed of a chancellor, five councillors, six
ministers, and a chief secretary. The decree of September, 1896, which
constitutes this body, announces the king’s absolutism in plain terms
in the preamble.

There are nine ministers--the Prime Minister, Minister of the Royal
Household, of Finance, of Home Affairs, Foreign Affairs, War, Justice,
Agriculture, and Education, but the royal will (or whim) overrides
their individual or collective decisions.

The Korean army consists of 4,800 men in Seoul, drilled by Russians,
and 1,200 in the provinces; the navy, of two small merchant steamers.

Korea is divided into 13 provinces and 360 magisterial districts.

The revenue, which is amply sufficient for all legitimate expenses, is
derived from Customs’ duties, under the able and honest management of
officers lent by the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs: a land tax of
$6 on every fertile _kyel_ (a fertile _kyel_ being estimated at about
6¹⁄₃ acres), and $5 on every mountain _kyel_; a household tax of 60
cents per house, houses in the capital enjoying immunity; and a heavy
excise duty of $16 per _cattie_ on manufactured ginseng.

Up to 1876 Korea successfully preserved her isolation, and repelled
with violence any attempt to encroach upon it. In that year Japan
forced a treaty upon her, and in 1882 China followed with “Trade and
Frontier Regulations.” The United States negotiated a treaty in 1882,
Great Britain and Germany in 1884, Russia and Italy in 1886, and
Austria in 1892, in all which, though under Chinese suzerainty, Korea
was treated with as an independent state. By these treaties, Seoul and
the ports of Chemulpo (Jenchuan), Fusan, and Wön-san (Gen-san) were
opened to foreign commerce, and this year (1897) Mok-po and Chinnam-po
have been added to the list.

After the treaties were signed, a swarm of foreign representatives
settled down upon the capital, where three of them are housed in
handsome and conspicuous foreign buildings. The British Minister at
Peking is accredited also to the Korean Court, and Britain has a
resident Consul-General. Japan, Russia, and America are represented
by Ministers, France by a Chargé d’Affaires, and Germany by a Consul.
China, which has been tardy in entering upon diplomatic relations with
Korea since the war, placed her subjects under the protection of the
British Consul-General.

Until recently, the coinage of Korea consisted of debased copper
_cash_, 500 to the dollar, a great check on business transactions; but
a new fractional coinage, of which the unit is a 20-cent piece, has
been put into circulation, along with 5-cent nickel, 5-_cash_ copper,
and 1-_cash_ brass pieces. The fine Japanese _yen_ or dollar is now
current everywhere. The _Dai Ichi Gingo_ and Fifty-eighth Banks of
Japan afford banking facilities in Seoul and the open ports.

In the treaty ports of Fusan, Wön-san, and Chemulpo, there were in
January, 1897, 11,318 foreign residents and 266 foreign business firms.
The Japanese residents numbered 10,711, and their firms 230. The great
majority of the American and French residents are missionaries, and
the most conspicuous objects in Seoul are the Roman Cathedral and the
American Methodist Episcopal Church. The number of British subjects
in Korea in January, 1897, was 65, and an agency of a British firm in
Nagasaki has recently been opened at Chemulpo. The approximate number
of Chinese in Korea at the same time was 2,500, divided chiefly between
Seoul and Chemulpo. There is a newly-instituted postal system for the
interior, with postage stamps of four denominations, and a telegraph
system, Seoul being now in communication with all parts of the world.

The roads are infamous, and even the main roads are rarely more than
rough bridle tracks. Goods are carried everywhere on the backs of men,
bulls, and ponies, but a railroad from Chemulpo to Seoul, constructed
by an American concessionaire, is actually to be opened shortly.

The language of Korea is mixed. The educated classes introduce Chinese
as much as possible into their conversation, and all the literature
of any account is in that language, but it is of an archaic form, the
Chinese of 1,000 years ago, and differs completely in pronunciation
from Chinese as now spoken in China. _En-mun_, the Korean script,
is utterly despised by the educated, whose sole education is in the
Chinese classics. Korean has the distinction of being the only language
of Eastern Asia which possesses an alphabet. Only women, children,
and the uneducated used the _En-mun_ till January, 1895, when a new
departure was made by the official Gazette, which for several hundred
years had been written in Chinese, appearing in a mixture of Chinese
characters and _En-mun_, a resemblance to the Japanese mode of writing,
in which the Chinese characters which play the chief part are connected
by _kana_ syllables.

A further innovation was that the King’s oath of Independence and
Reform was promulgated in Chinese, pure _En-mun_, and the mixed script,
and now the latter is regularly employed as the language of ordinances,
official documents, and the Gazette; royal rescripts, as a rule, and
despatches to the foreign representatives still adhering to the old
form.

This recognition of the Korean language by means of the official use
of the mixed, and in some cases of the pure script, the abolition
of the Chinese literary examinations as the test of the fitness of
candidates for office, the use of the “vulgar” script exclusively in
the _Independent_, the new Korean newspaper, the prominence given to
Korean by the large body of foreign missionaries, and the slow creation
of scientific text-books and a literature in _En-mun_, are tending not
only to strengthen Korean national feeling, but to bring the “masses,”
who can mostly read their own script, into contact with Western science
and forms of thought.

There is no national religion. Confucianism is the official cult, and
the teachings of Confucius are the rule of Korean morality. Buddhism,
once powerful, but “disestablished” three centuries ago, is to be met
with chiefly in mountainous districts, and far from the main roads.
Spirit worship, a species of _shamanism_, prevails all over the
kingdom, and holds the uneducated masses and the women of all classes
in complete bondage.

Christian missions, chiefly carried on by Americans, are beginning to
produce both direct and indirect effects.

Ten years before the opening[3] of Korea to foreigners, the Korean
king, in writing to his suzerain, the Emperor of China, said, “The
educated men observe and practice the teachings of Confucius and Wen
Wang,” and this fact is the key to anything like a correct estimate
of Korea. Chinese influence in government, law, education, etiquette,
social relations, and morals is predominant. In all these respects
Korea is but a feeble reflection of her powerful neighbor; and though
since the war the Koreans have ceased to look to China for assistance,
their sympathies are with her, and they turn to her for noble
ideals, cherished traditions, and moral teachings. Their literature,
superstitions, system of education, ancestral worship, culture, and
modes of thinking are Chinese. Society is organized on Confucian
models, and the rights of parents over children, and of elder over
younger brothers, are as fully recognized as in China.

It is into this archaic condition of things, this unspeakable
grooviness, this irredeemable, unreformed Orientalism, this parody
of China without the robustness of race which helps to hold China
together, that the ferment of the Western leaven has fallen, and this
feeblest of independent kingdoms, rudely shaken out of her sleep of
centuries, half frightened and wholly dazed, finds herself confronted
with an array of powerful, ambitious, aggressive, and not always
overscrupulous powers, bent, it may be, on overreaching her and each
other, forcing her into new paths, ringing with rude hands the knell
of time-honored custom, clamoring for concessions, and bewildering her
with reforms, suggestions, and panaceas, of which she sees neither the
meaning nor the necessity.

And so “The old order changeth, giving place to new,” and many
indications of the transition will be found in the later of the
following pages.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] The following are the measurements of 1,060 men taken at Seoul in
January, 1897, by Mr. A. B. Stripling:--

-------------------------------------------------------------------
                      Highest.         Lowest.          Average.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Height             5 ft. 11¹⁄₄ in.   4 ft. 9¹⁄₂ in.   5 ft. 4¹⁄₂ in.
Size round chest      39¹⁄₄ in.          27 in.           31 in.
      “    head       23¹⁄₄ “            20 “           21¹⁄₂ “
-------------------------------------------------------------------

[2] These averages are only calculated on observations taken during a
period of three and a half years.

[3] See appendix A.




CHAPTER I

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF KOREA


It is but fifteen hours’ steaming from the harbor of Nagasaki to Fusan
in Southern Korea. The Island of Tsushima, where the _Higo Maru_ calls,
was, however, my last glimpse of Japan; and its reddening maples and
blossoming plums, its temple-crowned heights, its stately flights of
stone stairs leading to Shinto shrines in the woods, the blue-green
masses of its pines, and the golden plumage of its bamboos, emphasized
the effect produced by the brown, bare hills of Fusan, pleasant enough
in summer, but grim and forbidding on a sunless February day. The
Island of the Interrupted Shadow, Chŏl-yong-To, (Deer Island), high and
grassy, on which the Japanese have established a coaling station and a
quarantine hospital, shelters Fusan harbor.

It is not Korea but Japan which meets one on anchoring. The lighters
are Japanese. An official of the _Nippon Yusen Kaisha_ (Japan Mail
Steamship Co.), to which the _Higo Maru_ belongs, comes off with
orders. The tide-waiter, however, is English--one of the English
_employés_ of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, lent to Korea,
greatly to her advantage, for the management of her customs’ revenue.
The foreign settlement of Fusan is dominated by a steep bluff
with a Buddhist temple on the top, concealed by a number of fine
cryptomeria, planted during the Japanese occupation in 1592. It is
a fairly good-looking Japanese town, somewhat packed between the
hills and the sea, with wide streets of Japanese shops and various
Anglo-Japanese buildings, among which the Consulate and a Bank are
the most important. It has substantial retaining and sea walls, and
draining, lighting, and roadmaking have been carried out at the expense
of the municipality. Since the war, waterworks have been constructed
by a rate of 100 _cash_ levied on each house, and it is hoped that the
present abundant supply of pure water will make an end of the frequent
epidemics of cholera. Above the town, the new Japanese military
cemetery, filling rapidly, is the prominent object.

Considering that the creation of a demand for foreign goods is not
thirteen years old, it is amazing to find how the Koreans have taken
to them, and that the foreign trade of Fusan has developed so rapidly
that, while in 1885 the value of exports and imports combined only
amounted to £77,850, in 1892 it had reached £346,608. Unbleached
shirtings, lawns, muslins, cambrics, and Turkey reds for children’s
wear have all captivated Korean fancy; but the conservatism of wadded
cotton garments in winter does not yield to foreign woollens, of which
the importation is literally _nil_. The most amazing stride is in the
importation of American kerosene oil, which has reached 71,000 gallons
in a quarter; and which, by displacing the fish-oil lamp and the dismal
rushlight in the paper lantern, is revolutionizing evening life in
Korea. Matches, too, have “caught on” wonderfully, and evidently have
“come to stay.” Hides, beans, dried fish, _bêche de mer_, rice, and
whale’s flesh are among the principal exports. It was not till 1883
that Fusan was officially opened to general foreign trade, and its
rise has been most remarkable. In that year its foreign population was
1,500; in 1897 it was 5,564.

In the first half of 1885 the Japan Mail Steamship Co. ran only one
steamer, calling at Fusan, to Wladivostok every five weeks, and a small
boat to Chemulpo, calling at Fusan, once a month. Now not a day passes
without steamers, large or small, arriving at the port, and in addition
to the fine vessels of the _Nippon Yusen Kaisha_, running frequently
between Kobe and Wladivostok, Shanghai and Wladivostok, Kobe and
Tientsin, and between Kobe Chefoo, and Newchang, all calling at Fusan,
three other lines, including one from Osaka direct, and a Russian mail
line running between Shanghai and Wladivostok, make Fusan a port of
call.

It appears that about one-third of the goods imported is carried inland
on the backs of men and horses. The taxes levied and the delays at
the barriers on both the overland and river routes are intolerable
to traders, a hateful custom prevailing under which each station is
controlled by some petty official, who, for a certain sum paid to the
Government in Seoul, obtains permission to levy taxes on all goods.[4]
The Nak-Tong River, the mouth of which is 7 miles from Fusan, is
navigable for steamers drawing 5 feet of water as far as Miriang, 50
miles up, and for junks drawing 4 feet as far as Sa-mun, 100 miles
farther, from which point their cargoes, transhipped into light
draught boats, can ascend to Sang-chin, 170 miles from the coast. With
this available waterway, and a hazy prospect that the much disputed
Seoul-Fusan railway may become an accomplished fact, Fusan bids fair
to become an important centre of commerce, as the Kyöng-sang Province,
said to be the most populous of the eight (now for administrative
purposes thirteen), is also said to be the most prosperous and
fruitful, with the possible exception of Chul-la.

Barren as the neighboring hills look, they are probably rich in
minerals. Gold is found in several places within a radius of 50 miles,
copper quite near, and there are coal fields within 100 miles.

To all intents and purposes the settlement of Fusan is Japanese. In
addition to the Japanese population of 5,508, there is a floating
population of 8,000 Japanese fishermen. A Japanese Consul-General
lives in a fine European house. Banking facilities are furnished by
the Dai Ichi Gingo of Tokio, and the post and telegraph services are
also Japanese. Japanese too is the cleanliness of the settlement,
and the introduction of industries unknown to Korea, such as rice
husking and cleaning by machinery, whale-fishing, _sake_-making, and
the preparation of shark’s fins, _bêche de mer_, and fish manure,
the latter an unsavory fertilizer, of which enormous quantities are
exported to Japan.

But the reader asks impatiently, “Where are the Koreans? I don’t want
to read about the Japanese!” Nor do I want to write about them, but
facts are stubborn, and they are the outstanding Fusan fact.

As seen from the deck of the steamer, a narrow up and down path keeping
at some height above the sea skirts the hillside for 3 miles from
Fusan, passing by a small Chinese settlement with official buildings,
uninhabited when I last saw them, and terminating in the walled town
of Fusan proper, with a fort of very great antiquity outside it,
modernized by the Japanese after the engineering notions of three
centuries ago.

Seated on the rocks along the shore were white objects resembling
pelicans or penguins, but as white objects with the gait of men moved
in endless procession to and fro between old and new Fusan, I assumed
that the seated objects were of the same species. The Korean makes
upon one the impression of novelty, and while resembling neither the
Chinese nor the Japanese, he is much better-looking than either,
and his physique is far finer than that of the latter. Though his
average height is only 5 feet 4¹⁄₂ inches, his white dress, which
is voluminous, makes him look taller, and his high-crowned hat,
without which he is never seen, taller still. The men were in winter
dress--white cotton sleeved robes, huge trousers, and socks; all
wadded. On their heads were black silk wadded caps with pendant sides
edged with black fur, and on the top of these, rather high-crowned,
somewhat broad-brimmed hats of black “crinoline” or horsehair gauze,
tied under the chin with crinoline ribbon. The general effect was
grotesque. There were a few children on the path, bundles of gay
clothing, but no women.

I was accompanied to old Fusan by a charming English “Una,” who,
speaking Korean almost like a native, moved serenely through the
market-day crowds, welcomed by all. A miserable place I thought it, and
later experience showed that it was neither more nor less miserable
than the general run of Korean towns. Its narrow dirty streets consist
of low hovels built of mud-smeared wattle without windows, straw
roofs, and deep eaves, a black smoke-hole in every wall 2 feet from
the ground, and outside most are irregular ditches containing solid
and liquid refuse. Mangy dogs and blear-eyed children, half or wholly
naked, and scaly with dirt, roll in the deep dust or slime, or pant and
blink in the sun, apparently unaffected by the stenches which abound.
But market-day hid much that is repulsive. Along the whole length of
the narrow, dusty, crooked street, the wares were laid out on mats on
the ground, a man or an old woman, bundled up in dirty white cotton,
guarding each. And the sound of bargaining rose high, and much breath
was spent on beating down prices, which did not amount originally to
the tenth part of a farthing. The goods gave an impression of poor
buyers and small trade. Short lengths of coarse white cotton, skeins
of cotton, straw shoes, wooden combs, tobacco pipes and pouches,
dried fish and seaweed, cord for girdles, paper rough and smooth, and
barley-sugar nearly black, were the contents of the mats. I am sure
that the most valuable stock-in-trade there was not worth more than
three dollars. Each vendor had a small heap of _cash_ beside him, an
uncouth bronze coin with a square hole in the centre, of which at that
time 3,200 _nominally_ went to the dollar, and which greatly trammelled
and crippled Korean trade.

A market is held in Fusan and in many other places every fifth day.
On these the country people rely for all which they do not produce,
as well as for the sale or barter of their productions. Practically
there are no shops in the villages and small towns, their needs
being supplied on stated days by travelling pedlars who form a very
influential guild.

Turning away from the bustle of the main street into a narrow,
dirty alley, and then into a native compound, I found the three
Australian ladies who were the objects of my visit to this decayed and
miserable town. Except that the compound was clean, it was in no way
distinguishable from any other, being surrounded by mud hovels. In one
of these, exposed to the full force of the southern sun, these ladies
were living. The mud walls were concealed with paper, and photographs
and other European knickknacks conferred a look of refinement. But
not only were the rooms so low that one of the ladies could not stand
upright in them, but privacy was impossible, invasions of Korean women
and children succeeding each other from morning to night, so that
even dressing was a spectacle for the curious. Friends urged these
ladies not to take this step of living in a Korean town 3 miles from
Europeans. It was represented that it was not safe, and that their
health would suffer from the heat and fetid odors of the crowded
neighborhood, etc. In truth it was not a “conventional thing” to do.

On my first visit I found them well and happy. Small children were
clinging to their skirts, and a certain number of women had been
induced to become cleanly in their persons and habits. All the
neighbors were friendly, and rude remarks in the streets had altogether
ceased. Many of the women resorted to them for medical help, and the
simple aid they gave brought them much good-will. This friendly and
civilizing influence was the result of a year of living under very
detestable circumstances. If they had dwelt in grand houses 2¹⁄₂ miles
off upon the hill, it is safe to say that the result would have been
_nil_. Without any fuss or blowing of trumpets, they quietly helped to
solve one of the great problems as to “Missionary Methods,” though why
it should be a “problem” I fail to see. In the East at least, every
religious teacher who has led the people has lived among them, knowing
if not sharing their daily lives, and has been easily accessible at all
times. It is not easy to imagine a Buddha or One greater than Buddha
only reached by favor of, and possibly by feeing, a gate-keeper or
servant.

On visiting them a year later I found them still well and happy. The
excitement among the Koreans consequent on the Tong-hak rebellion and
the war had left them unmolested. A Japanese regiment had encamped
close to them, and, by permission, had drawn water from the well in
their compound, and had shown them nothing but courtesy. Having in
two years gained general confidence and good-will, they built a small
bungalow just above the old native house, which has been turned into a
very primitive orphanage.

The people were friendly and kind from the first. Those who were the
earliest friends of the ladies are their staunchest friends now, and
they knew them and their aims so well when they moved into their new
house that it made no difference at all. Some go there to see the
ladies, others to see the furniture or hear the organ, and a few to
inquire about the “Jesus doctrine.” The “mission work” now consists of
daily meetings for worship, classes for applicants for baptism, classes
at night for those women who may not come out in the daytime, a Sunday
school with an attendance of eighty, visiting among the people, and
giving instruction in the country and surrounding villages. About forty
adults have professed Christianity, and regularly attend Christian
worship.

I mention these facts not for the purpose of glorifying these ladies,
who are simply doing their duty, but because they fall in with a theory
of my own as to methods of mission work.

There is a very small Roman Catholic mission-house, seldom tenanted,
between the two Fusans. In the province of Kyöng-sang in which they
are, there are Roman missions which claim 2,000 converts, and to
promulgate Christianity in thirty towns and villages. There are
two foreign priests, who spend most of the year in teaching in the
provincial villages, living in Korean huts, in Korean fashion, on
Korean food.

A coarse ocean with a distinct line of demarcation between the blue
water of the Sea of Japan and the discoloration of the Yellow Sea,
harsh, grim, rocky, brown islands, mostly uninhabited--two monotonously
disagreeable days, more islands, muddier water, an estuary and junks,
and on the third afternoon from Fusan the _Higo Maru_ anchored in the
roadstead of Chemulpo, the seaport of Seoul. This cannot pretend to
be a harbor, indeed most of the roadstead, such as it is, is a slimy
mud flat for much of the day, the tide rising and falling 36 feet.
The anchorage, a narrow channel in the shallows, can accommodate five
vessels of moderate size. Yet though the mud was _en évidence_, and
the low hill behind the town was dull brown, and a drizzling rain was
falling, I liked the look of Chemulpo better than I expected, and after
becoming acquainted with it in various seasons and circumstances,
I came to regard it with very friendly feelings. As seen from the
roadstead, it is a collection of mean houses, mostly of wood, painted
white, built along the edge of the sea and straggling up a verdureless
hill, the whole extending for more than a mile from a low point on
which are a few trees, crowned by the English Vice-Consulate, a
comfortless and unworthy building, to a hill on which are a large
decorative Japanese tea-house, a garden, and a Shinto shrine. Salient
features there are none, unless the house of a German merchant, an
English church, the humble buildings of Bishop Corfe’s mission on the
hill, the large Japanese Consulate, and some new municipal buildings on
a slope, may be considered such. As at Fusan, an English tide-waiter
boarded the ship, and a foreign harbormaster berthed her, while a
Japanese clerk gave the captain his orders.

[Illustration: HARBOR OF CHEMULPO.]

Mr. Wilkinson, the acting British Vice-Consul, came off for me,
and entertained me then and on two subsequent occasions with great
hospitality, but as the Vice-Consulate had at that time no guest-room,
I slept at a Chinese inn, known as “Steward’s,” kept by Itai, an honest
and helpful man who does all he can to make his guests comfortable, and
partially succeeds. This inn is at the corner of the main street of
the Chinese quarter, in a very lively position, as it also looks down
the main street of the Japanese settlement. The Chinese settlement is
solid, with a handsome _yamen_ and guild hall, and rows of thriving
and substantial shops. Busy and noisy with the continual letting off
of crackers and beating of drums and gongs, the Chinese were obviously
far ahead of the Japanese in trade. They had nearly a monopoly of the
foreign “custom”; their large “houses” in Chemulpo had branches in
Seoul, and if there were any foreign requirement which they could not
meet, they procured the article from Shanghai without loss of time.
The haulage of freight to Seoul was in their hands, and the market
gardening, and much besides. Late into the night they were at work,
and they used the roadway for drying hides and storing kerosene tins
and packing cases. Scarcely did the noise of night cease when the din
of morning began. To these hard-working and money-making people rest
seemed a superfluity.

The Japanese settlement is far more populous, extensive, and
pretentious. Their Consulate is imposing enough for a legation. They
have several streets of small shops, which supply the needs chiefly
of people of their own nationality, for foreigners patronize Ah Wong
and Itai, and the Koreans, who hate the Japanese with a hatred three
centuries old, also deal chiefly with the Chinese. But though the
Japanese were outstripped in trade by the Chinese, their position in
Korea, even before the war, was an influential one. They gave “postal
facilities” between the treaty ports and Seoul and carried the foreign
mails, and they established branches of the First National Bank[5]
in the capital and treaty ports, with which the resident foreigners
have for years transacted their business, and in which they have full
confidence. I lost no time in opening an account with this Bank in
Chemulpo, receiving an English check-book and pass-book, and on all
occasions courtesy and all needed help. Partly owing to the fact that
English cottons for Korea are made in bales too big for the Lilliputian
Korean pony, involving reduction to more manageable dimensions on being
landed, and partly to causes which obtain elsewhere, the Japanese
are so successfully pushing their cottons in Korea, that while they
constituted only 3 per cent. of the imports in 1887, they had risen
to something like 40 per cent. in 1894.[6] There is a rapidly growing
demand for yarn to be woven on native looms. The Japanese are well
to the front with steam and sailing tonnage. Of 198 steamers entered
inwards in 1893, 132 were Japanese; and out of 325 sailing vessels,
232 were Japanese. It is on record that an English merchantman was
once seen in Chemulpo roads, but actually the British mercantile flag,
unless on a chartered steamer, is not known in Korean waters. Nor was
there in 1894 an English merchant in the Korean treaty ports, or an
English house of business, large or small, in Korea.

Just then rice was in the ascendant. Japan by means of pressure
had induced the Korean Government to consent to suspend the decree
forbidding its export, and on a certain date the sluices were to be
opened. Stacks of rice bags covered the beach, rice in bulk being
measured into bags was piled on mats in the roadways, ponies and
coolies rice-laden filed in strings down the streets, while in the
roadstead a number of Japanese steamers and junks awaited the taking
off the embargo at midnight on 6th March. A regular rice babel
prevailed in the town and on the beach, and much disaffection prevailed
among the Koreans at the rise in the price of their staple article of
diet. Japanese agents scoured the whole country for rice, and every
_cattie_ of it which could be spared from consumption was bought in
preparation for the war of which no one in Korea dreamed at that time.
The rice bustle gave Chemulpo an appearance of a thriving trade which
it is not wont to have except in the Chinese settlement. Its foreign
population in 1897 was 4,357.

The reader may wonder where the Koreans are at Chemulpo, and in truth
I had almost forgotten them, for they are of little account. The
increasing native town lies outside the Japanese settlement on the
Seoul road, clustering round the base of the hill on which the English
church stands, and scrambling up it, mud hovels planting themselves
on every ledge, attained by filthy alleys, swarming with quiet dirty
children, who look on the high-road to emulate the _do-lessness_ of
their fathers. Korean, too, is the official _yamen_ at the top of the
hill, and Korean its methods of punishment, its brutal flagellations
by _yamen_ runners, its beating of criminals to death, their howls of
anguish penetrating the rooms of the adjacent English mission, and
Korean too are the bribery and corruption which make it and nearly
every _yamen_ sinks of iniquity. The gate with its double curved roofs
and drum chamber over the gateway remind the stranger that though the
capital and energy of Chemulpo are foreign, the government is native.
Not Korean is the abode of mercy on the other side of the road from the
_yamen_, the hospital connected with Bishop Corfe’s mission, where in
a small Korean building the sick are received, tended, and generally
cured by Dr. Landis, who himself lives as a Korean in rooms 8 feet by
6, studying, writing, eating, without chair or table, and accessible
at all times to all comers. The 6,700 inhabitants of the Korean town,
or rather the male half of them, are always on the move. The narrow
roads are always full of them, sauntering along in their dress hats,
not apparently doing anything. It is old Fusan over again, except
that there are permanent shops, with stocks-in-trade worth from one
to twenty dollars; and as an hour is easily spent over a transaction
involving a few _cash_, there is an appearance of business kept up.
In the settlement the Koreans work as porters and carry preposterous
weights on their wooden packsaddles.

[Illustration: GATE OF OLD FUSAN]


FOOTNOTES:

[4] According to Mr. Hunt, the Commissioner of Customs at Fusan, in
the Kyöng-sang province alone there are 17 such stations. Fusan is
hedged round by a cordon of them within a ten-mile radius, and on the
Nak-tong, which is the waterway to the provincial capital, there are
four in a distance of 25 miles.

[5] Now the _Dai Ichi Gingo_.

[6] For latest trade statistics see appendix B.




CHAPTER II

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE CAPITAL


Chemulpo, being on the island-studded estuary of the Han, which is
navigable for the 56 miles up to Ma-pu, the river port of Seoul, it
eventually occurred to some persons more enterprising than their
neighbors to establish steam communication between the two. Manifold
are the disasters which have attended this simple undertaking. Nearly
every passenger who has entrusted himself to the river has a tale to
tell of the boat being deposited on a sandbank, and of futile endeavors
to get off, of fretting and fuming, usually ending in hailing a passing
_sampan_ and getting up to Ma-pu many hours behind time, tired, hungry,
and disgusted. For the steam launches are only half powered for their
work, the tides are strong, the river shallows often, and its sandbanks
shift almost from tide to tide. Hence this natural highway is not
much patronized by people who respect themselves, and all sorts of
arrangements are made for getting up to the capital by “road.” There
is, properly speaking, no road, but the word serves. Mr. Gardner, the
British acting Consul-General in Seoul, kindly arranged to escort me
the 25 miles, and I went up in seven hours in a chair with six bearers,
jolly fellows, who joked and laughed and raced the Consul’s pony.
Traffic has worn for itself a track, often indefinite, but usually
straggling over and sterilizing a width enough for three or four
highways, and often making a new departure to avoid deep mud holes.
The mud is nearly bottomless. Bullock-carts owned by Chinese attempt
the transit of goods, and two or three embedded in the mud till the
spring showed with what success. Near Ma-pu all traffic has to cross
a small plain of deep sand. Pack bulls, noble animals, and men are the
carriers of goods. The redoubtable Korean pony was not to be seen. Foot
passengers in dress hats and wadded white garments were fairly numerous.

The track lies through rolling country, well cultivated. There are
only two or three villages on the road, but there are many, surrounded
by fruit trees, in the folds of the adjacent low hills; stunted pines
(_Pinus sinensis_) abound, and often indicate places of burial. The
hillsides are much taken up with graves. There are wooden sign or
distant posts, with grotesque human faces upon them, chiefly that of
Chang Sun, a traitor, whose misdemeanors were committed 1,000 years
ago. The general aspect of the country is bare and monotonous. Except
for the orchards and the spindly pines, there is no wood. There is
no beauty of form, nor any of those signs of exclusiveness, such as
gates or walls, which give something of dignity to a landscape. These
were my first impressions. But I came to see on later journeys that
even on that road there can be a beauty and fascination in the scenery
when glorified and idealized by the unrivalled atmosphere of a Korean
winter, which it is a delight even to recall, and that the situation of
Seoul for a sort of weird picturesqueness compares favorably with that
of almost any other capital, but its orientalism, a marked feature of
which was its specially self-asserting dirt, is being fast improved off
the face of the earth.

From the low pass known as the Gap, there is a view of the hills in the
neighborhood of Seoul, and before reaching the Han these, glorified and
exaggerated by an effect of atmosphere, took on something of grandeur.
Crossing the Han in a scow to which my chair accommodated itself more
readily than Mr. Gardner’s pony, and encountering ferry boats full of
pack bulls bearing the night soil of the city to the country, we landed
on the rough, steep, filthy, miry river bank, and were at once in
the foul, narrow, slimy, rough street of Ma-pu, a twisted alley full
of mean shops for the sale of native commodities, of bulls carrying
mountains of brushwood which nearly filled up the roadway; and with a
crowd, masculine solely, which swayed and loafed, and did nothing in
particular. Some quiet agricultural country, and some fine trees, a
resemblance to the land of the Bakhtiari Lurs, in the fact of one man
working a spade or shovel, while three others helped him to turn up the
soil by an arrangement of ropes, then two chairs with bearers in blue
uniforms, carrying Mrs. and Miss Gardner, accompanied by Bishop Corfe,
Mr. M’Leavy Brown, the Chief Commissioner of Korean Customs, and Mr.
Fox, the Assistant Consul, then the hovels and alleys became thick,
and we were in extra-mural Seoul. A lofty wall, pierced by a deep
double-roofed gateway, was passed, and ten minutes more of miserable
alleys brought us to a breezy hill, crowned by the staring red brick
buildings of the English Legation and Consular offices.

The Russian Legation has taken another and a higher, and its loftly
tower and fine façade are the most conspicuous objects in the city,
while a third is covered with buildings, some Korean and tasteful, but
others in a painful style of architecture, a combination of the factory
with the meeting-house, belonging to the American Methodist Episcopal
Mission, the American Presbyterians occupying a humbler position below.
A hill on the other side of the town is dedicated to Japan, and so in
every part of the city the foreigner, shut out till 1883, is making his
presence felt, and is undermining that which is Korean in the Korean
capital by the slow process of contact.

One of the most remarkable indications of the change which is stealing
over the Hermit City is that a nearly finished Roman Catholic
Cathedral, of very large size, with a clergy-house and orphanages,
occupies one of the most prominent positions in Seoul. The King’s
father, the Tai-Won-Kun, still actively engaged in politics, is the man
who, thirty years ago, persecuted the Roman Christians so cruelly and
persistently as to raise up for Korea a “noble army of martyrs.”

I know Seoul by day and night, its palaces and its slums, its
unspeakable meanness and faded splendors, its purposeless crowds, its
mediæval processions, which for barbaric splendor cannot be matched
on earth, the filth of its crowded alleys, and its pitiful attempt to
retain its manners, customs, and identity as the capital of an ancient
monarchy in face of the host of disintegrating influences which are at
work, but it is not at first that one “takes it in.” I had known it for
a year before I appreciated it, or fully realized that it is entitled
to be regarded as one of the great capitals of the world, with its
supposed population of a quarter of a million, and that few capitals
are more beautifully situated.[7] One hundred and twenty feet above the
sea, in Lat. 37° 34′ N. and Long. 127° 6′ E., mountain-girdled, for the
definite peaks and abrupt elevation of its hills give them the grandeur
of mountains, though their highest summit, San-kak-San, has only an
altitude of 2,627 feet, few cities can boast, as Seoul can, that tigers
and leopards are shot within their walls! Arid and forbidding these
mountains look at times, their ridges broken up into black crags and
pinnacles, ofttimes rising from among distorted pines, but there are
evenings of purple glory, when every forbidding peak gleams like an
amethyst with a pink translucency, and the shadows are cobalt and the
sky is green and gold. Fair are the surroundings too in early spring,
when a delicate green mist veils the hills, and their sides are flushed
with the heliotrope azalea, and flame of plum, and blush of cherry, and
tremulousness of peach blossom appear in unexpected quarters.

[Illustration: JAPANESE MILITARY CEMETERY, CHEMULPO.]

Looking down on this great city, which has the aspect of a lotus pond
in November, or an expanse of overripe mushrooms, the eye naturally
follows the course of the wall, which is discerned in most outlandish
places, climbing Nam-San in one direction, and going clear over the
crest of Puk-han in another, enclosing a piece of forest here, and
a vacant plain there, descending into ravines, disappearing and
reappearing when least expected. This wall, which contrives to look
nearly as solid as the hillsides which it climbs, is from 25 to 40
feet in height, and 14 miles in circumference (according to Mr. Fox of
H.B.M.’s Consular Service), battlemented along its entire length, and
pierced by eight gateways, solid arches or tunnels of stone, surmounted
by lofty gate houses with one, two, or three curved tiled roofs. These
are closed from sunset to sunrise by massive wooden gates, heavily
bossed and strengthened with iron, bearing, following Chinese fashion,
high-sounding names, such as the “Gate of Bright Amiability,” the “Gate
of High Ceremony,” the “Gate of Elevated Humanity.”

The wall consists of a bank of earth faced with masonry, or of solid
masonry alone, and is on the whole in tolerable repair. It is on the
side nearest the river, and onwards in the direction of the Peking
Pass, that extra-mural Seoul has expanded. One gate is the Gate of the
Dead, only a royal corpse being permitted to be carried out by any
other. By another gate criminals passed out to be beheaded, and outside
another their heads were exposed for some days after execution, hanging
from camp-kettle stands. The north gate, high on Puk-han, is kept
closed, only to be opened in case the King is compelled to escape to
one of the so-called fortresses on that mountain.

Outside the wall is charming country, broken into hills and wooded
valleys, with knolls sacrificed to stately royal tombs, with their
environment of fine trees, and villages in romantic positions among
orchards and garden cultivation. Few Eastern cities have prettier walks
and rides in their immediate neighborhood, or greater possibilities of
rapid escape into sylvan solitudes, and I must add that no city has
environs so safe, and that ladies without a European escort can ride,
as I have done, in every direction outside the walls without meeting
with the slightest annoyance.

I shrink from describing intra-mural Seoul.[8] I thought it the foulest
city on earth till I saw Peking, and its smells the most odious, till
I encountered those of Shao-shing! For a great city and a capital
its meanness is indescribable. Etiquette forbids the erection of
two-storied houses, consequently an estimated quarter of a million
people are living on “the ground,” chiefly in labyrinthine alleys, many
of them not wide enough for two loaded bulls to pass, indeed barely
wide enough for one man to pass a loaded bull, and further narrowed by
a series of vile holes or green, slimy ditches, which receive the solid
and liquid refuse of the houses, their foul and fetid margins being
the favorite resort of half-naked children, begrimed with dirt, and
of big, mangy, blear-eyed dogs, which wallow in the slime or blink in
the sun. There too the itinerant vendor of “small wares,” and candies
dyed flaring colors with aniline dyes, establishes himself, puts a
few planks across the ditch, and his goods, worth perhaps a dollar,
thereon. But even Seoul has its “spring cleaning,” and I encountered on
the sand plain of the Han, on the ferry, and on the road from Ma-pu to
Seoul, innumerable bulls carrying panniers laden with the contents of
the city ditches.

The houses abutting on these ditches are generally hovels with deep
eaves and thatched roofs, presenting nothing to the street but a mud
wall, with occasionally a small paper window just under the roof,
indicating the men’s quarters, and invariably, at a height varying
from 2 to 3 feet above the ditch, a blackened smoke-hole, the vent
for the smoke and heated air, which have done their duty in warming
the floor of the house. All day long bulls laden with brushwood to
a great height are entering the city, and at six o’clock this pine
brush, preparing to do the cooking and warming for the population,
fills every lane in Seoul with aromatic smoke, which hangs over it with
remarkable punctuality. Even the superior houses, which have curved and
tiled roofs, present nothing better to the street than this debased
appearance.

The shops partake of the general meanness. Shops with a stock-in-trade
which may be worth six dollars abound. It is easy to walk in Seoul
without molestation, but any one standing to look at anything attracts
a great crowd, so that it is as well that there is nothing to look
at. The shops have literally not a noteworthy feature. Their one
characteristic is that they have none! The best shops are near the
Great Bell, beside which formerly stood a stone with an inscription
calling on all Koreans to put intruding foreigners to death. So small
are they that all goods are within reach of the hand. In one of the
three broad streets, there are double rows of removable booths, in
which now and then a small box of Korean _niello_ work, iron inlaid
with silver, may be picked up. In these and others the principal
commodities are white cottons, straw shoes, bamboo hats, coarse
pottery, candlesticks, with draught screens, combs, glass beads,
pipes, tobacco-pouches, spittoons, horn-rimmed goggles, much worn
by officials, paper of many kinds, wooden pillow-ends, decorated
pillowcases, fans, ink-cases, huge wooden saddles with green leather
flaps bossed with silver, laundry sticks, dried persimmons, loathsome
candies dyed magenta, scarlet, and green, masses of dried seaweed and
fungi, and ill-chosen collections of the most trumpery of foreign
trash, such as sixpenny kerosene lamps, hand mirrors, tinsel vases,
etc., the genius of bad taste presiding over all.

Plain brass dinner sets and other brass articles are made, and
some mother-of-pearl inlaying in black lacquer from old designs is
occasionally to be purchased, and embroideries in silk and gold thread,
but the designs are ugly, and the coloring atrocious. Foreigners
have bestowed the name Cabinet Street on a street near the English
Legation, given up to the making of bureaus and marriage chests. These,
though not massive, look so, and are really handsome, some being of
solid chestnut wood, others veneered with maple or peach, and bossed,
strapped, and hinged with brass, besides being ornamented with great
brass hasps and brass padlocks 6 inches long. These, besides being
thoroughly Korean, are distinctly decorative. There are few buyers,
except in the early morning, and shopping does not seem a pastime,
partly because none but the poorest class of women can go out on foot
by daylight.

In the booths are to be seen tobacco pipes, pipestems, and bowls,
coarse glazed pottery, rice bowls, Japanese lucifer matches, aniline
dyes, tobacco-pouches, purses, flint and tinder pouches, rolls of oiled
paper, tassels, silk cord, nuts of the edible pine, rice, millet,
maize, peas, beans, string shoes, old crinoline hats, bamboo and reed
hats in endless variety, and coarse native cotton, very narrow.

In this great human hive, the ordinary sightseer finds his vocation
gone. The inhabitants constitute the “sight” of Seoul. The great bronze
bell, said to be the third largest in the world, is one of the few
“sights” usually seen by strangers. It hangs in a bell tower in the
centre of the city, and bears the following inscription:--

 “Sye Cho the Great, 12^{th} year Man cha [year of the cycle] and moon,
 the 4^{th} year of the great Ming Emperor Hsüan-hua [A.D. 1468], the
 head of the bureau of Royal despatches, Sye Ko chyeng, bearing the
 title Sa Ka Chyeng, had this pavilion erected and this bell hung.”

This bell, whose dull heavy boom is heard in all parts of Seoul, has
opened and closed the gates for five centuries.

The grand triple gateway of the Royal Palace with its double roof, the
old audience hall in the Mulberry Gardens, and the decorative roofs
of the gate towers, are all seen in an hour. There remains the Marble
Pagoda, seven centuries old, so completely hidden away in the back-yard
of a house in one of the foulest and narrowest alleys of the city,
that many people never see it at all. As I was intent on photographing
some of the reliefs upon it, I visited it five times, and each time
with fresh admiration; but so _wedged_ in is it, that one can only get
any kind of view of it by climbing on the top of a wall. Every part is
carved, and the flat parts richly so, some of the tablets representing
Hindu divinities, while others seem to portray the various stages
of the soul’s progress towards Nirvana. The designs are undoubtedly
Indian, modified by Chinese artists, and this thing of beauty stands on
the site of a Buddhist monastery. It is a thirteen-storied pagoda, but
three stories were taken off in the Japanese invasion three centuries
ago, and placed on the ground uninjured. So they remained, but on
my last visit children had defaced the exquisite carving, and were
offering portions for sale. Not far off is another relic of antiquity,
a decorated and inscribed tablet standing on the back of a granite
turtle of prodigious size. Outside the west gate, on a plain near the
Peking Pass, was a roofed and highly decorated arch of that form known
as the _pailow_, and close by it a sort of palace hall, in which every
new sovereign of Korea waited for the coming of a special envoy from
Peking, whom he joined at the _pailow_, accompanying him to the palace,
where he received from him his investiture as sovereign.

On the slope of Nam-San the white wooden buildings, simple and
unpretentious, of the Japanese Legation are situated, and below them a
Japanese colony of nearly 5,000 persons, equipped with tea-houses, a
theatre, and the various arrangements essential to Japanese well-being.
There, in acute contrast to everything Korean, are to be seen streets
of shops and houses where cleanliness, daintiness, and thrift reign
supreme, and unveiled women, and men in girdled dressing-gowns and
clogs, move about as freely as in Japan. There also are to be seen
minute soldiers or military police, and smart be-sworded officers,
who change guard at due intervals; nor are such precautions needless,
for the heredity of hate is strong in Korea, and on two occasions the
members of this Legation have had to fight their way down to the sea.
The Legation was occupied at the time of my first visit by Mr. Otori,
an elderly man with pendulous white whiskers, who went much into the
little society which Seoul boasts, talked nothings, and gave no promise
of the rough vigor which he showed a few months later. There also are
the Japanese bank and post office, both admirably managed.

The Chinese colony was in 1894 nearly as large, and differed in no
respect from such a colony anywhere else. The foreigners depend for
many things on the Chinese shops, and as the Koreans like the Chinese,
they do some trade with them also. The imposing element connected with
China was the _yamen_ of Yuan, the Minister Resident and representative
of Korea’s Suzerain, by many people regarded as “the power behind the
throne,” who is reported to have gone more than once unbidden into
the King’s presence, and to have reproached him with his conduct of
affairs. Great courtyards and lofty gates on which are painted the
usual guardian gods, and a brick dragon screen, seclude the palace in
which Yuan lived with his guards and large retinue; and the number
of big, supercilious men, dressed in rich brocades and satins, who
hung about both this Palace and the Consulate, impressed the Koreans
with the power and stateliness within. The Americans were very severe
on Yuan, but so far as I could learn his chief fault was that he let
things alone, and neglected to use his unquestionably great power in
favor of reform and common honesty--but he was a Chinese mandarin!
He possessed the power of life and death over Chinamen, and his
punishments were often to our thinking barbarous, but the Chinese
feared him so much that they treated the Koreans fairly well, which is
more than can be said of the Japanese.

One of the “sights” of Seoul is the stream or drain or watercourse, a
wide, walled, open conduit, along which a dark-colored festering stream
slowly drags its malodorous length, among manure and refuse heaps which
cover up most of what was once its shingly bed. There, tired of crowds
masculine solely, one may be refreshed by the sight of women of the
poorest class, some ladling into pails the compound which passes for
water, and others washing clothes in the fetid pools which pass for
a stream. All wear one costume, which is peculiar to the capital, a
green silk coat--a man’s coat with the “neck” put over the head and
clutched below the eyes, and long wide sleeves falling from the ears.
It is as well that the Korean woman is concealed, for she is not a
houri. Washing is her manifest destiny so long as her lord wears white.
She washes in this foul river, in the pond of the Mulberry Palace, in
every wet ditch, and outside the walls in the few streams which exist.
Clothes are partially unpicked, boiled with ley three times, rolled
into hard bundles, and pounded with heavy sticks on stones. After being
dried they are beaten with wooden sticks on cylinders, till they attain
a polish resembling dull satin. The women are slaves to the laundry,
and the only sound which breaks the stillness of a Seoul night is the
regular beat of their laundry sticks.

From the beautiful hill Nam-San, from the Lone Tree Hill, and from
a hill above the old Mulberry Palace, Seoul is best seen, with its
mountainous surroundings, here and there dark with pines, but mostly
naked, falling down upon the city in black arid corrugations. These
mountains enclose a valley about 5 miles long by 3 broad, into which
200,000 people are crammed and wedged. The city is a sea of low brown
roofs, mostly of thatch, and all but monotonous, no trees and no
open spaces. Rising out of this brown sea there are the curved double
roofs of the gates, and the gray granite walls of the royal palaces,
and within them the sweeping roofs of various audience halls. Cutting
the city across by running from the east to the west gate is one broad
street, another striking off from this runs to the south gate, and a
third 60 yards wide runs from the great central artery to the palace.
This is the only one which is kept clear of encumbrance at all times,
the others being occupied by double rows of booths, leaving only a
narrow space for traffic on either side. When I first looked down on
Seoul early in March, one street along its whole length appeared to be
still encumbered with the drift of the previous winter’s snow. It was
only by the aid of a glass that I discovered that this is the great
promenade, and that the snowdrift was just the garments of the Koreans,
whitened by ceaseless labor with the laundry sticks. In these three
broad streets the moving crowd of men in white robes and black dress
hats seldom flags. They seem destitute of any object. Many of them are
of the _yang-ban_ or noble class, to whom a rigid etiquette forbids any
but official or tutorial occupation, and many of whom exist by hanging
on to their more fortunate relatives. Young men of the middle class
imitate their nonchalance and swinging gait.

There, too, are to be seen officials, superbly dressed, mounted on
very fat but handsome ponies, with profuse manes and tails, the riders
sitting uneasily on the tops of saddles with showy caparisonings a
foot high, holding on to the saddle bow, two retainers leading the
steed, and two more holding the rider in his place; or officials in
palanquins, with bearers at a run, amid large retinues. In the more
plebeian streets nothing is to be seen but bulls carrying pine brush,
strings of ponies loaded with salt or country produce, water-carriers
with pails slung on a yoke, splashing their contents, and coolies
carrying burdens on wooden pack saddles.

But in the narrower alleys, of which there are hundreds, further
narrowed by the low deep eaves, and the vile ditches outside the
houses, only two men can pass each other, and the noble red bull with
his load of brushwood is rarely seen. Between these miles of mud walls,
deep eaves, green slimy ditches, and blackened smoke-holes, few besides
the male inhabitants and burden bearers are seen to move. They are the
paradise of mangy dogs. Every house has a dog and a square hole through
which he can just creep. He yelps furiously at a stranger, and runs
away at the shaking of an umbrella. He was the sole scavenger of Seoul,
and a very inefficient one. He is neither the friend nor companion of
man. He is ignorant of Korean and every other spoken language. His bark
at night announces peril from thieves. He is almost wild. When young he
is killed and eaten in spring.

I have mentioned the women of the lower classes, who wash clothes and
draw water in the daytime. Many of these were domestic slaves, and
all are of the lowest class. Korean women are very rigidly secluded,
perhaps more absolutely so than the women of any other nation. In the
capital a very curious arrangement prevailed. About eight o’clock the
great bell tolled a signal for men to retire into their houses, and
for women to come out and amuse themselves, and visit their friends.
The rule which clears the streets of men occasionally lapses, and then
some incident occurs which causes it to be rigorously reënforced. So
it was at the time of my arrival, and the pitch dark streets presented
the singular spectacle of being tenanted solely by bodies of women with
servants carrying lanterns. From its operation were exempted blind men,
officials, foreigners’ servants, and persons carrying prescriptions to
the druggists. These were often forged for the purpose of escape from
durance vile, and a few people got long staffs and personated blind
men. At twelve the bell again boomed, women retired, and men were at
liberty to go abroad. A lady of high position told me that she had
never seen the streets of Seoul by daylight.

The nocturnal silence is very impressive. There is no human hum, throb,
or gurgle. The darkness too is absolute, as there are few if any
lighted windows to the streets. Upon a silence which may be felt, the
deep, penetrating boom of the great bell breaks with a sound which is
almost ominous.

[Illustration: TURTLE STONE]


FOOTNOTES:

[7] By a careful census taken in February, 1897, the intra-mural
population of Seoul was 144,636 souls, and the extra-mural 75,189,
total 219,815, males predominating to the extent of 11,079.

[8] _Nous avons changé tout cela._ As will be seen from a chapter near
the end of the book, the Chief Commissioner of Customs, energetically
seconded by the Governor of Seoul, has worked surprising improvements
and sanitary changes which, if carried out perseveringly, will redeem
the capital from the charges which travellers have brought against it.




CHAPTER III

THE KUR-DONG


Before leaving England letters from Korea had warned me of the
difficulty of travelling in the interior, of getting a trustworthy
servant, and above all, a trustworthy interpreter. Weeks passed
by, and though Bishop Corfe and others exerted themselves on my
behalf, these essential requisites were not forthcoming, for to find
a reliable English-speaking Korean is well-nigh impossible. There
are English-speaking Koreans who have learned English, some in the
Government School, and others in the Methodist Episcopal School, and
many of these I interviewed. The English of all was infirm, and they
were all limp and timid, a set of poor creatures. Some of them seemed
very anxious to go with me, and were partially engaged, and the next
day came, looking uneasy, and balancing themselves on the edge of their
chairs, told me that their mothers said they must not go because there
were tigers, or that three months was too long a journey, or that they
could not go so far from their families, etc. At last a young man came
who really spoke passable English, but on entering the room with a
familiar nod, he threw himself down in an easy-chair, swinging his leg
over the arm! He asked many questions about the journey, said it was
very long to be away from Seoul, and that he should require one horse
for his baggage and another for himself. I remarked that, in order to
get through the difficulties of the journey, it would be necessary
to limit the baggage as much as possible. He said he could not go
with fewer than nine suits of clothes! I remarked that a foreigner
would only take two, and that I should reduce myself to two. “Yes,”
he replied, “but foreigners are so dirty in their habits.” This from
a Korean! So once more I had to settle down, and accept the kindly
hospitality of my friends, trusting that something would “turn up.”

By this delay I came in for the _Kur-dong_,[9] one of the most
remarkable spectacles I ever saw, and it had the added interest of
being seen in its splendor for probably the last time, as circumstances
which have since occurred, and the necessity for economy, must put an
end to much of the scenic display. The occasion was a visit of the King
in state to sacrifice in one of the ancestral temples of his dynasty,
members of which have occupied the Korean throne for five centuries.
Living secluded in his palace, guarded by 1,000 men, his subjects
forbidden to pronounce his name, which indeed is seldom known, in
total ignorance of any other aspect of his kingdom and capital than
that furnished by the two streets through which he passes to offer
sacrifice, the days on which he performs this pious act offer to his
subjects their sole opportunities of gazing on his august countenance.
As the Queen’s procession passed by on the day of the Duke of York’s
marriage, I heard a workingman say, “It’s we as pays, and we likes to
get the valey for our money.” The Korean pays in another and heavier
sense, and as in tens of thousands he crowds in reverential silence the
route of the _Kur-dong_, he is probably glad that the one brilliant
spectacle of the year should be as splendid as possible.

The monotony of Seoul is something remarkable. Brown mountains “picked
out” in black, brown mud walls, brown roofs, brown roadways, whether
mud or dust, while humanity is in black and white. Always the same
bundled-up women clutching their green coats under their eyes, always
the same surge of _yang-bans_ and their familiars swinging along South
Street, the same strings of squealing ponies “spoiling for a fight,”
the same processions of majestic red bulls under towering loads of
brushwood, the same coolies in dirty white, forever carrying burdens,
the same joyless dirty children getting through life on the gutters’
edge, and the same brownish dogs, feebly wrangling over offal. On such
monotony and colorlessness, the _Kur-dong_ bursts like the sun. Alas
for this mean but fascinating capital, that the most recent steps
towards civilization should involve the abolition of its one spectacle!

By six in the morning of the looked-for day we were on our way from
the English Legation to a position near the Great Bell, all the male
population of the alleys taking the same direction, along with children
in colors, and some of the poorer class of women with gay handkerchiefs
folded Roman fashion on their hair. For the first time I saw the grand
proportions of the road called by foreigners South Street. The double
rows of booths had been removed the night before, and along the side
of the street, at intervals of 20 yards, torches 10 feet high were let
into the ground to light the King on his return from sacrificing. It is
only by its imposing width that this great street lends itself to such
a display, for the houses are low and mean, and on one side at least
are only superior hovels. In place of the booths the subjects were
massed twelve deep, the regularity of the front row being preserved
by a number of _yamen_ runners, who brought down their wooden paddles
with an unmerciful whack on any one breaking the line. The singular
monotony of baggy white coats and black crinoline hats was relieved by
boy bridegrooms in yellow hats and rose-pink coats, by the green silk
coats of women, and the green, pink, heliotrope and Turkey red dresses
of children. The crowd had a quietly pleased but very limp look. There
was no jollity or excitement, no flags or popular demonstrations, and
scarcely a hum from a concourse which must have numbered at least
150,000, half the city, together with numbers from the country who had
walked three and four days to see the spectacle. Squalid and mean is
ordinary Korean life, and the King is a myth for most of the year. No
wonder that the people turn out to see as splendid a spectacle as the
world has to show, its splendor centring round their usually secluded
sovereign. It is to the glory of a dynasty which has occupied the
Korean throne for five centuries as well as in honor of the present
occupant.

The hour of leaving the palace had been announced as 6 A.M., but
though it was 7.30 before the boom of a heavy gun announced that the
procession was in motion, the interest never flagged the whole time.
Hundreds of coolies sprinkled red earth for the width of a foot along
the middle of the streets, for hypothetically the King must not pass
over soil which has been trodden by the feet of his subjects. Squadrons
of cavalry, with coolies leading their shabby ponies, took up positions
along the route, and in a great mass in front of us. The troopers sat
on the ground smoking, till a very _distrait_ bugle-call sent them to
their saddles. The ponies bit, kicked, and squealed, and the grotesque
and often ineffectual attempts of the men to mount them provoked the
laughter of the crowd, as one trooper after another, with one foot in
the stirrup and the other on the ground, hopped round at the pleasure
of his steed. After all, with the help of their coolies, were mounted,
whacks secretly administered by men in the crowd nearly unhorsed many
of them, but they clung with both hands to their saddle bows and
eventually formed into a ragged line.

Among the very curious sights were poles carried at measured distances
supporting rectangular frames resembling small umbrella stands, filled
with feathered arrows, and messengers dashing along as if they had been
shot and were escaping from another shaft, for from the backs of their
collars protruded arrows which had apparently entered obliquely. Either
on the back or breast or both of the superb dresses of officials were
satin squares embroidered in unique designs, representing birds and
beasts, storks indicating civil, and tigers military, rank, while the
number of birds or animals on the lozenge denoted the wearer’s exact
position.

Though there were long stretches of silence, scarcely broken by the hum
of a multitude, there were noisy interludes, novel in their nature,
produced by men, sometimes fifteen in a row, who carried poles with a
number of steel rings loosely strung upon them, which they tossed into
the air and allowed to fall against each other with a metallic clink,
loud and strident. Likewise the trains of servants in attendance on
mandarins emitted peculiar cries, sounding _G_ in unison, then raising
their note and singing _C_ three times, afterwards, with a falling
cadence, singing _G_ again.

But of the noises which passed for music, the most curious as to method
was that made by the drummers, who marched irregularly in open order
in lines extending across the broad roadway. These carried bowl-shaped
kettledrums slung horizontally, and bass drum sticks mainly hidden
by their voluminous sleeves. In time with the marching, the right
hand stick rose above the drummer’s head, then the left stick in like
manner, but both fell again nearly to the drum without emitting a
sound! The next act of the performance consisted in lifting both sticks
above the head together and again bringing them down silently. Finally
the sticks were crossed, and during two marching steps rose feebly, and
as feebly fell on the ends of the drum, producing a muffled sound, and
this programme was repeated during the duration of the march.

Soldiers in rusty black belted frocks, wide trousers, bandaged into
padded socks, and straw shoes, stacked arms in a side street. Closed
black and colored chairs went past at a trot. Palace attendants in
hundreds in brown glazed cotton sleeved cloaks, blue under robes tied
below the knee with bunches of red ribbon, and stiff black hats, with
heavy fan-shaped plumes of peacock’s feathers, rode ragged ponies on
gay saddles of great height, without bridles, the animals being led by
coolies. High officials passed in numbers in chairs or on pony back,
each with from twenty to thirty gay attendants running beside him,
and a row of bannermen extending across the broad street behind him,
each man with a silk banner bearing the cognomen of his lord. These
officials were superbly dressed, and made a splendid show. They wore
black, high-crowned hats, with long crimson tassels behind, and heavy,
black ostrich plumes falling over the brim in front, mazarine blue silk
robes, split up to the waist behind, with orange silk under robes and
most voluminous crimson trousers, loosely tied above the ankles with
knots of sky blue ribbon, while streamers of ribbon fell from throats
and girdles, and the hats were secured by throat lashes of large amber
beads. Each carried over his shoulder a yellow silk banneret with his
style in Chinese characters in crimson upon it, and in the same hand
his baton of office, with a profusion of streamers of rich ribbons
depending from it. The sleeves were orange in the upper part and
crimson in the lower, and very full.

The overfed and self-willed ponies, chiefly roan and gray, are very
handsome, and showily caparisoned, the heads covered with blue, red,
and yellow balls, and surmounted with great crimson silk pompous,
the bridles a couple of crimson silk scarves, the saddles a sort
of leather-covered padded pack saddle 12 inches above the animal’s
back, with wide, deep flaps of bright green silver-bossed leather
hanging down on either side, the cruppers folded white silk, and the
breastplate shields of gold embroidery. The gorgeous rider, lifted by
his servants upon this elevation, stands erect in his stirrups with
his feet not halfway down his pony’s sides, his left hand clutching
rather than holding an arch placed for this purpose at the bow of the
saddle. These officials made no attempt to hold their own bridles,
their ponies were led by servants, retainers supported them by the feet
on either side, and as their mounts showed their resentment of the pace
and circumstances by twistings and strugglings with their grooms, the
faces of the riders expressed “a fearful joy,” if “joy” it was.

Waves of color and Korean grandeur rolled by, official processions,
palace attendants, bannermen, with large silk banners trailing on
the stiff breeze, each flagstaff crested with a tuft of pheasant’s
feathers, the King’s chief cook, with an enormous retinue, more palace
servants, smoking long pipes, drummers, fifers, couriers at a gallop,
with arrows stuck into the necks of their coats, holding on to their
saddles and rope bridles, mixed up with dishevelled ponies with ragged
pack saddles, carrying cushions, lacquer boxes, eatables, cooking
utensils, and smoking apparatus, led caparisoned ponies, bowmen,
soldiers straggling loosely, armed with matchlock guns, till several
thousand persons had passed. Yet this was not the procession, though it
might well have served for one.

At 7.30, while this “march past” was still going on, a gun was fired,
and the great bell, which was very close to us, boomed heavily, and a
fanfaronade of trumpets and the shrill scream of fifes announced that
Li Hsi had at last left the palace. The cavalry opposite us prepared
to receive His Majesty by _turning tail_, a manœuvre not accomplished
without much squealing and fighting. There was a general stir among
the spectators, men with arrows in their coats galloped frantically,
there was an onslaught on the “Derby dog,” and an attack by men, armed
with the long wooden paddles which are used for beating criminals, on
inoffensive portions of the crowd.

It is said that there were 5,000 servants and officials connected with
the palace, and there were nominally 6,000 soldiers in Seoul, and
the greater part of these took part in the many splendid processions
which went to form the Royal procession. It would be impossible for
a stranger to give in detail the component parts of such a show,
the like of which has no existence elsewhere on earth, passing for
more than an hour in the bright sunshine, in detachments, in compact
masses, at a stately walk or a rapid run, in the full splendor of a
barbaric mediævalism, or to say what dignitaries flashed by in the
kaleidoscopic blaze of color.

The procession of the King was led by the “general of the vanguard,”
superbly dressed, supported by retainers on his led pony, and followed
by crowds of dignitaries, each with his train, soldiers, men carrying
aloft frames of arrows, reaching nearly across the road, and huge flags
of silk brocade surmounted by plumes of pheasant’s feathers, servants
in rows of a hundred in the most delicate shades of blue, green, or
mauve silk gauze over white, halberdiers, grandees, each with a retinue
of bannermen, rows of royal bannermen carrying yellow and blue silk
flags emblazoned, cavalry men in imitation gold helmets and mediæval
armor, and tiger-hunters wearing coarse black felt hats with conical
crowns and dark blue coats, trailing long guns. With scarcely a pause
followed the President of the Foreign Office, high above the crowd on a
monocycle, a black wheel supporting on two uprights a black platform,
carrying a black chair decorated with a leopard skin, the occupant of
which was carried by eight men at a height of 8 feet from the ground.
More soldiers, bannermen, and drummers, and then came the chief of the
eunuchs, grandly dressed, with an immense retinue, and a large number
of his subordinates, most of whom up to that time, by their position
in the palace and their capacity for intrigue, had exercised a very
baneful influence on Korean affairs.

The procession became more quaint and motley still. Palace attendants
appeared in the brilliant garments of the Korean middle ages; cavalry
in antique armor were jumbled up with cavalry in loose cotton frocks
and baggy trousers, supposed to be dressed and armed in European
fashion, but I failed to detect the flattery of imitation. There were
cavalry in black Tyrolese hats with pink ribbon round them, black
cotton sacks loosely girdled by leather belts with brass clasps never
cleaned, white wadded stockings, and hempen shoes. Some had leather
saddles, others rode on pack saddles, with the great pad which should
go underneath on the top; some held on to their saddles, others to
their rope bridles, the ponies of some were led by coolies in dirty
white clothes; the officers were all held on their saddles, many tucked
their old-fashioned swords under their arms, lest carrying them in
regulation fashion should make their animals kick; the feet of some
nearly touched the ground, and those of others hung only halfway down
their ponies’ sides; ponies squealed, neighed, reared, and jibbed, but
somehow or other these singular horsemen managed to form ragged lines.

Then came foot soldiers with rusty muskets and innumerable standards,
generals, court dignitaries, statesmen, some with crimson hats with
heavy black plumes, others with high peaked crinoline hats with
projecting wings, others with lofty mitres covered with tinsel gleaming
like gold, each with a splendid train. Mediæval costumes blazing
with color flashed past, there were more soldiers, and this time
they carried Snider rifles, two Gatling guns were dragged by _yamen_
runners, who frantically spanked all and sundry with their paddles,
drummers beat their drums unmercifully, fifes shrieked, there were more
dignitaries with fairylike retinues in blue and green silk gauze, the
King’s personal attendants in crowds followed in yellow, with bamboo
hats trimmed with rosettes, standard-bearers came next, bearing the
Royal standard, a winged tiger rampant on a yellow ground, more flags
and troops, and then the curious insignia of Korean Royalty, including
a monstrous red silk umbrella, and a singular frame of stones. More
grandees, more soldiers, more musical instruments, and then come the
Royal chairs, the first, which was canopied with red silk, being
empty, the theory being that this was the more likely to receive an
assassin’s blow. A huge trident was carried in front of it. After this,
borne high aloft by forty bearers clothed in red, in a superb chair
of red lacquer, richly tasselled and canopied, and with wings to keep
off the sun, came the King, whose pale, languid face never changed
its expression as he passed with all the dignity and splendor of his
kingdom through the silent crowd.

More grandees, servants, soldiers, standard-bearers, arrow-men,
officials, cavalry, and led horses formed the procession of the Crown
Prince, who was also carried in a red palanquin, and looked paler
and more impassive than his father. The supply of officials seemed
inexhaustible, for behind him came a quarter of a mile of grandees in
splendid costumes, with hats decorated with red velvet and peacock’s
feathers, and throat lashes of great amber beads, with all their
splendid trains, footmen in armor bossed with large nails, drummers,
men carrying arrow frames and insignia on poles, then the “general of
the rear guard” in a gleaming helmet and a splendid blue, crimson,
and gold uniform, propped up by retainers on his handsome pony, more
soldiers armed with old matchlock guns, lastly men bearing arrow frames
and standards, and with them the barbaric and bizarre splendor of the
_Kur-dong_ was over, and the white crowd once more overflowed the mean
street. Quite late in the evening the Royal pageant returned by the
light of stationary torches, with lanterns of blue and crimson silk
undulating from the heads of pikes and bayonets.

This truly splendid display was estimated to cost $25,000--a heavy
burden on the small resources of the kingdom. It is only thus
surrounded that the King ever appears in public, and the splendor
accentuates the squalor of the daily life of the masses of the
people in the foul alleys which make up most of the city. It must be
remembered that the people taking part in the pageant are not men
hired and dressed up by a _costumier_, but that they are actual Court
officials and noblemen in the dress of to-day, and that the weapons
carried by the soldiers are those with which they are supposed to repel
attack or put down rebellion.


FOOTNOTES:

[9] If an apology be necessary for the following minute description of
this unique ceremonial, I offer it on the ground that it was probably
the last of its kind, and that full details of it have not been given
before.




CHAPTER IV

SEOUL, THE KOREAN MECCA


Further difficulties and delays, while they pushed my journey into the
interior into the hot weather, gave me the advantage of learning a
little about the people and the country before starting. In one sense
Seoul is Korea. Take a mean alley in it with its mud-walled hovels,
deep-eaved brown roofs, and malodorous ditches with their foulness and
green slime, and it may serve as an example of the street of every
village and provincial town. In country places there are few industrial
specialties. A Seoul shop of “assorted notions” represents the shop
of every country town. The white clothing and the crinoline dress hat
are the same everywhere as in Seoul. Whatever of national life there
is exists only in the capital. Strong as is the drift towards London
in our own agricultural districts, it is stronger in Korea towards
Seoul. Seoul is not only the seat of government, but it is the centre
of official life, of all official employment, and of the literary
examinations which were the only avenues to employment. It is always
hoped that something may be “picked up” in Seoul. Hence there is a
constant permanent or temporary gravitation towards it, and the larger
proportion of the youths who swing and lounge on sunny afternoons
along the broad streets, aping the gait of _yang-bans_, are aspirants
for official position. Gusts of popular feeling which pass for public
opinion in a land where no such thing exists are known only in Seoul.
It is in the capital that the Korean feels the first stress of his
unsought and altogether undesired contact with Western civilization,
and resembles nothing so much as a man awaking from a profound sleep,
rubbing his eyes half-dazed and looking dreamily about him, not quite
sure where he is.

Seoul is also the commercial centre of a country whose ideas of
commerce are limited to huckstering transactions. All business is
done there. All country shops are supplied with goods from Seoul. All
produce not shipped from the treaty ports converges on Seoul. It is the
centre of the great trading guilds, which exercise a practical monopoly
in certain sorts of goods, as well as of the guild of porters by whom
the traffic of the country is carried on. The heart of every Korean is
in Seoul. Officials have town houses in the capital, and trust their
business to subordinates for much of the year. Landed proprietors
draw their rents and “squeeze” the people on their estates, but are
absentees living in the capital. Every man who can pay for food and
lodging on the road trudges to the capital once or twice a year, and
people who live in it, of whatever degree, can hardly be bribed to
leave it even for a few weeks. To the Korean it is the place in which
alone life is worth living.

Yet it has no objects of art, very few antiquities, no public gardens,
no displays except the rare one of the _Kur-dong_, and no theatres.
It lacks every charm possessed by other cities. Antique, it has no
ruins, no libraries, no literature, and lastly an indifference to
religion without a parallel has left it without temples, while certain
superstitions which still retain their hold have left it without a tomb!

Leaving out the temple of Confucius and the homage officially rendered
to his tablet in Korea as in China, there are no official temples
in Seoul, nor might a priest enter its gates under pain of death,
consequently the emphasis which noble religious buildings give even
to the meanest city in China or Japan is lacking. There is a small
temple to the God of War outside the south gate, with some very curious
frescoes, but I seldom saw any worshippers there. The absence of
temples is a feature of the other Korean cities. Buddhism, which for
1,000 years before the founding of the present dynasty was the popular
cult, has been “disestablished” and practically proscribed since the
sixteenth century, and Koreans account for the severe enactments
against priests by saying that in the Japanese invasion three centuries
ago Japanese disguised themselves as Buddhist priests and gained
admission to cities, putting their garrisons to the sword. Be that true
or false, Buddhism in Korea to be found must be sought.

[Illustration: GUTTER SHOP, SEOUL.]

As there are no temples, so there are no other signs of religion, and
the hasty observer would be warranted in putting down the Koreans as
a people without a religion. Ancestral worship, and a propitiation of
dæmons or spirits, the result of a timid and superstitious dread of the
forces of Nature, are to the Korean in place of a religion. Both, I am
inclined to believe, are the result of fear, the worship of ancestors
being dictated far less by filial piety than by the dread that
ancestral spirits may do harm to their descendants. This cult prevails
from the King to the coolie. It inspires the costly splendors of the
_Kur-dong_, as well as the spread of ancestral food in the humblest
hovel on New Year’s Eve.

The graves within an area of ten miles from the city wall are among the
remarkable features of this singular capital. The dead have a monopoly
of the fine hill slopes and southern aspects. A man who when alive is
content with a mud hovel in a dingy alley, when dead must repose on a
breezy hill slope with dignified and carefully tended surroundings. The
little fine timber which exists in the denuded neighborhood of Seoul is
owed to the Royal and wealthy dead. The amount of good land occupied by
the dead is incredible. The grave of a member of the Royal family on
a hill creates a solitude for a considerable distance around. In the
case of rich and great men as well as of princes, the grave is a lofty
grassy mound, often encircled by a massive stone railing, with the hill
terraced in front and excavated in a horseshoe shape behind. A stone
altar and stone lanterns are placed in front, and the foot of the
hill, as at the “Princess’s Tomb,” is often occupied by a temple-like
building containing tablets with the name and rank of the dead. The
Royal tombs are approached by stately avenues of gigantic stone
figures, possibly a harmless survival of the practice of offering human
and other sacrifices at a burial. These figures represent a priest,
a warrior in armor, a servant, a pony, and a sheep (?). The poorer
dead occupy hillsides in numbers, resting under grass mounds on small
platforms of grass always neatly kept. The lucky place for interment is
in all cases chosen by the geomancer. Behind rich men’s graves pines
are usually planted in a crescent. The dead population of the hillsides
round Seoul is simply enormous.

Funerals usually go out near dusk with a great display of colored
lanterns, but I was fortunate enough to see an artisan’s corpse carried
out by daylight. First came four drums and a sort of fife perpetrating
a lively tune as an accompaniment to a lively song. These were followed
by a hearse, if it may be called so, a domed and gaudily painted
construction with a garland of artificial flowers in the centre of the
dome, a white Korean coat thrown across the roof, and four flagstaffs
with gay flags at the four corners, bamboo poles, flower-wreathed,
forming a platform on which the hearse was borne by eight men in peaked
yellow hats garlanded with blue and pink flowers. Bouquets of the
same were disposed carelessly on the front and sides of the hearse,
the latter being covered with shield-shaped flags of gaudily colored
muslin. The chief mourner followed, completely clothed in sackcloth,
wearing an umbrella-shaped hat over 4 feet in diameter, and holding
a sackcloth screen before his face by two bamboo handles. Men in
flower-wreathed hats surrounded him, some of them walking backwards
and singing. He looked fittingly grave, but it is a common custom for
those who attend the chief mourner to try to make him laugh by comic
antics and jocular remarks. There are “burial clubs” in Seoul to which
100,000 _cash_ are contributed (then worth about thirty-three dollars,
silver). The first man to die receives 30,000 _cash_, the second
33,000, and the third 37,000. This man had belonged to one of these,
which accounts for an artisan having such a handsome funeral.

Mourners dress in straw-colored hempen cloth, and all wear the enormous
hats mentioned before, which so nearly conceal the face that the
carrying of the grass-cloth screen is almost a work of supererogation.
A mourner may not enter the palace grounds, and as mourning for a
father lasts for three years, a courtier thus bereaved is for that time
withdrawn from Court.

Among the curious customs mainly of Chinese origin connected with death
are the dressing the dying person in his best clothes when death is
very close at hand. The very poor are buried coffinless in a wrapping
of straw, and are carried by two men on a bier, the nature of the
burden being concealed by hoops covered with paper.

When Buddhist priests and temples were prohibited in the walled towns
three centuries ago, anything like a national faith disappeared
from Korea, and it is only through ancestral worship and a form
of “Shamanism” practiced by the lower and middle classes that
any recognition of the unseen survives, and that is in its most
superstitious and rudimentary form. Protestant Christian missionaries,
preceded in 1784 by those of the Roman Catholic Church, entered Korea
in 1884, almost as soon as the country was opened by treaty, and
agents of the American Methodist Episcopal and Northern Presbyterian
Churches took up their abode in Seoul. They have been followed by
representatives of several of the divisions among Protestants--Southern
Presbyterians, Canadian Presbyterians, Australian Presbyterians, and
Baptists--and in 1890 the first English mission to Korea was founded
under Bishop Corfe. A Roman Catholic Church and a very large Roman
Catholic Cathedral with a spire occupy two of the most prominent
sites in Seoul. One of the best sites is covered with the buildings
belonging to the Methodist Episcopal Mission, schools for girls and
boys, a printing press, a Union Church, and hospitals for men and
women, with which dispensaries are connected. The girls’ school
connected with this mission is one of the most admirable in its
organization and results that I have seen. The Presbyterians occupy
a lowlier position, but have the same class of agencies at work, and
lately the King handed over to them a large hospital in the city, known
as the “Government Hospital.”

Bishop Corfe’s mission occupies two modest sites in modest fashion, all
its buildings being strictly Korean. On one side of Seoul, at Nak-tong,
it has the Community House, where the bishop, clergy, doctor, and
printer live and have their private chapel, also the Mission press,
and a very efficient hospital for men, admirably nursed by the Sisters
of St. Peter’s Kilburn. On the slope of the British Legation Hill
are the English Church of the Advent, a beautiful Korean building,
the Community House of the Sisters of St. Peter, and the Women’s
Hospital buildings, embracing a dispensary, a new hospital (the Dora
Bird Memorial) of eighteen beds, with a room for a private patient,
besides an old hospital, to be used only for infectious diseases. These
are under the charge of a lady physician, and are also nursed by the
Sisters of St. Peter, who in both hospitals do admirable work in a
bright and loving spirit which is beyond all praise.

There are about 75 Protestant and 34 Roman missionaries in Korea,
mostly in Seoul. The language has the reputation of being very
difficult, and few of this large number have acquired facility in the
use of it. The idea of a nation destitute of a religion, and gladly
accepting one brought by the foreigner, must be dropped. The religion
the Korean would accept is one which would show him how to get money
without working for it. The indifference is extreme, the religious
faculty is absent, there are no religious ideas to appeal to, and the
moral teachings of Confucius have little influence with any class.
The Korean has got on so well without a religion, in his own opinion,
that he does not want to be troubled with one, specially a religion
of restraint and sacrifice which has no worldly good to offer. After
nearly twelve years of work, the number of baptized native Protestant
Christians in 1897 was 777.[10] The Roman Catholics claim 28,802, and
that the average rate of increase is 1,000 a year.[11] Their priests
live mostly in the wretched hovels of the people, amidst their foul
surroundings, and share their unpalatable food and sordid lives.
Doubtless, mission work in Korea will not differ greatly from such work
elsewhere among the older civilizations. Barriers of indifference,
superstition, and inertness exist, and whatever progress is made will
probably be chiefly through medical missions, showing Christianity in
action, and native agency, and through such schools as I have already
alluded to, which leave every feature of Korean custom, dress, and
manner of living untouched, while Christian instruction and training
are the first objects, and where the gentle, loving, ennobling
influence of the teacher is felt during every hour of the day.


FOOTNOTES:

[10] In 1897 the influence of Christianity was much stronger than in
1895, and the prospects of its spread much more encouraging.

[11] For statistics of Missions in February, 1897, see Appendix.




CHAPTER V

THE SAILING OF THE SAMPAN


At a point when the difficulties in the way of my projected journey had
come to be regarded as insurmountable, owing to the impossibility of
getting an interpreter, and I had begun to say “_if_ I go” instead of
“_when_ I go,” Mr. Miller, a young missionary, offered his services, on
condition that he might take his servant to supplement his imperfect
knowledge of Korean. Bishop Corfe provided me with a Chinese servant,
Wong, a fine, big, cheery fellow, with inexhaustible good-nature and
contentment, never a cloud of annoyance on his face, always making the
best of everything, ready to help every one, true, honest, plucky,
passionately fond of flowers, faithful, manly, always well and hungry,
and with a passable knowledge of English! He was a Chefoo _sampan_-man
when Bishop Corfe picked him up, and nothing could make him into a
regular servant, but he suited me admirably, and I was grieved indeed
when I had to part with him.

The difficulty about money which then beset every traveller in the
interior cost a good deal of anxious planning. The Japanese _yen_ and
its subdivisions were only current in Seoul and the treaty ports,
there were no bankers or money-changers anywhere, and the only coin
accepted was the _cash_, of which at that time 3,200 nominally went
to the dollar. This coin is strung in hundreds on straw strings, and
the counting of it, and the carrying of it, and the being without it
are all a nuisance. It takes six men or one pony to carry 100 _yen_ in
_cash_, £10! Travellers, through their Consuls, can obtain from the
Foreign Office a letter to officials throughout the country called
a _kwan-ja_, entitling the bearer to their good offices, and
especially to food, transport, and money. But as it usually happens
that a magistrate advancing money to a foreigner is not repaid by the
Government, however accurately the sum has been paid in Seoul, the
arrangement is a very odious one to officials, and I promised our
Consul that I would not make use of it for money. Consequently, the
boat which I engaged for the earlier part of the journey was ballasted
with _cash_, and I took a bag of silver _yen_, and trusted to my usual
good fortune, which in this case did not altogether fail.

[Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF CENTRAL KOREA

  The Edinburgh Geographical Institute      John Bartholomew & Co.

Fleming H. Revell Company.]

[Illustration: THE AUTHOR’S SAMPAN, HAN RIVER.]

In addition to this uncouth and heavy burden, I took a saddle, a
trestle-bed with bedding and mosquito net, muslin curtains, a folding
chair, two changes of clothing, Korean string shoes, and a “regulation”
waterproof cloak. Besides, I took green tea, curry powder, and 20 lbs.
of flour. I discarded all superfluities, such as flasks, collapsing
cups, hand mirrors, teapots, sandwich tins, lamps, and tinned soups,
meats, bouillon, and fruits. The kitchen equipment consisted of a
Japanese brazier for charcoal, a shallow Japanese pan and frying-pan,
and a small kettle, with charcoal tongs, the whole costing under two
dollars! The “table equipment” was limited: a small mug, two plates
and a soup plate, all in enamelled iron, and a knife, fork, and
spoon, which folded up, a knife, fork, and spoon of common make being
reserved for the “kitchen.” Tables, trays, tablecloths, and sheets
were from thenceforth unknown luxuries. I mention my outfit, because
I know it to be a sufficient one, and that every pound of superfluous
weight adds to the difficulty of getting transport in Korea and in
many other countries. Besides, I was encumbered for the first time
with a tripod camera weighing 16 lbs., and a hand camera weighing 4
lbs., with the apparatus belonging to them, and had to reduce other
things accordingly. On the whole, it is best to trust to the food of
the country. Korea produces eggs, and in some regions chickens. The
chestnuts are good, and though the flour, which can be got in a few
places, is gritty, and the rice is a bad color, both are eatable, and
the foreigner, always an object of suspicion, is less so when he buys
and eats native viands, and does not carry about with him a number of
(to Koreans) outlandish-looking utensils and commodities.

Regarding much of the region which I purposed to visit no information
could be obtained, either from Europeans or Korean officials, and the
best map, a reduction of a Japanese map by Sir E. Satow, turned out
to be astray. Mr. Warner, of Bishop Corfe’s Mission, had ascended the
north branch of the Han, but it is still doubtful whether any European
has been up the south and much larger branch which I explored on this
journey. It was certain only that the country was mountainous, and that
the rapids were numerous and severe. It had also been said earnestly,
and with an appearance of knowledge, by several people that it would be
impossible for a lady to travel in the interior; and certainly much of
what I heard, supposing it to be fact, was sufficiently deterring, but
from many similar statements in other countries I knew that a deduction
of at least fifty per cent. must be made!

On the 14th of April, 1894, when the environs of Seoul were seen
through a mist of green, and plum and peach blossom was in the
ascendant, and the heliotrope azalea was just beginning to tint the
hillsides, and the air was warm and muggy, I left the kind friends who
had done much to make my visit to Seoul interesting and agreeable, and
went on ponyback through the south gate, passing the temple of the God
of War, and over a pine-clothed ridge of Nam-San to Han Kang, four
miles from Seoul, a little shipping village, where my boat lay, to
avoid a rapid which lies between it and Ma-pu. Up to Ma-pu, 56 miles
from Chemulpo, there is a very considerable tidal rise and fall which
ceases at the rapid.

A limp, silent crowd of men and boys denoted the whereabouts of the
boat, from which Mr. Miller’s servant, Che-on-i, emerging with the
broad smile with which Orientals announce bad news, informed us that
the boat was too small! There were very few to be got, and I had not
seen this one, Mr. Wyers, the Legation constable, having engaged her
for me; and I went “on board” at once, with much curiosity, as she was
to be my home for an indefinite number of weeks. And small she truly
was, only 28 feet over all, by 4 feet 10 inches at her widest part,
and with her whole cargo, animate and inanimate, on board she only
drew 3 inches of water. The roof which was put on at my request was a
marvel. A slight framework of a ridge pole and some sticks precariously
tied together supported some mats of pheasant grass, with the long
blades hanging down outside and over the gunwale, which was only 12
inches high. These mats were tied together over the ridge pole, and let
in a streak of daylight all the way along. At its highest part this
roof was only 4 feet 6 inches. It was just possible to sit under it
without stooping. By putting forked sticks under what by courtesy were
called the rafters, they could be lifted a foot from the gunwale to
let in light and air. Two or three times in a strong breeze this roof
collapsed and fell about our heads!

In the fore part of the boat, 7 feet long, one boatman paddled or
poled, and in the hinder part, 4 feet long, the other poled or worked
an oar. But the fore part was also our kitchen and poultry yard and
the boatmen’s kitchen. There also were kept faggots, driftwood,
and miscellaneous stores, with the food and water in unappetizing
proximity. There, too, Wong and Che-on-i spent their day; and there
they all cooked, ate, and washed clothes; and there at night the
boatmen curled themselves up and slept in a space 4 feet × 4. The rest
of the _sampan_ divided itself naturally by the thwarts. My part, the
centre, was originally 8 feet × 4 feet 10 inches, but encroachments by
no means gradual constituted it a “free coup” for sacks, rice-bags,
clothing, and baskets, till it was reduced to a bare 6 feet, into
which space my bed, chair, saddle, and luggage were packed for five
weeks. In the hinder division, 7 feet × 4 feet 4 inches, Mr. Miller
lived and studied, and he, Wong, and Che-on-i slept. It was scarcely
possible for six people and their gear to be more closely packed. Mr.
Miller, though not an experienced traveller, cheerfully made the best
of everything then and afterwards, and preserved the serenity of his
temper under all circumstances.

The _sampan’s_ crew of two consisted of Kim, her owner, a tall wiry,
picturesque, aristocratic-looking old man, and his “hired man,” who was
never heard to speak except on two occasions, when, being very drunk,
he developed a remarkable loquacity. On the whole, they were well
behaved and quiet. I saw them in close proximity every hour of the day
and was never annoyed by anything they did. Kim was paid $30 per month
for the boat, and his laziness was wonderful. To dawdle along, to start
late and tie up early, to crawl when he tracked, and to pole or paddle
with the least expenditure of labor, was his policy. To pole for an
hour, then tie up and take a smoke, to spend half a day now and then on
buying rice, to work on my sensibilities by feigning exhaustion, and
to adopt every dodge of the lazy man, was his practice. The contract
stipulated for three men, and he only took one, making some evasive
excuse. But I have said the worst I can say when I write that they
never made more than 10 miles in a day, and often not more than 7, and
that when they came to severe rapids they always wanted to go back.[12]

Mr. Wyers busied himself in putting a mat on the floor and stowing
things as neatly as possible, and when curtains had been put up,
the quarters, though “cribbed, cabined, and confined,” looked quite
tolerable. The same limp, silent crowd looked on till we left Han Kang
at midday. In a few hours things shook into shape, and after all the
discomforts were not great, possibly the greatest being that the smoke
and the smell of the boatmen’s malodorous food blew through the boat.


FOOTNOTES:

[12] I took very careful notes on the Han, but as minute details would
be uninteresting to the general reader, and would involve a good deal
of apparent repetition, I shall give only the most salient features
of a journey which, if it has ever been made, has certainly not been
described.




CHAPTER VI

ON THE RIVER OF GOLDEN SAND


During the five weeks which I spent on the Han, though the routine
of daily life varied little, there was no monotony. The country and
the people were new, and we mixed freely, almost too freely, with the
latter; the scenery varied hourly, and after the first few days became
not only beautiful, but in places magnificent, and full of surprises;
the spring was in its early beauty, and the trees in their first
vividness of green, red, and gold; the flowers and flowering shrubs
were in their glory, the crops at their most attractive stage, birds
sang in the thickets, rich fragrant odors were wafted off on the water,
red cattle, though rarely, fed knee-deep in abounding grass, and the
waters of the Han, nearly at their lowest, were clear as crystal, and
their broken sparkle flashed back the sunbeams which passed through a
sky as blue as that of Tibet. There was a prosperous look about the
country too, and its security was indicated by the frequent occurrence
of solitary farms, with high secluding fences, standing under the deep
shade of fine walnut and persimmon trees.

Unlike the bare, arid, denuded hillsides between Chemulpo and Seoul,
the slopes along much of the route are wooded, and in many cases
forested both with coniferæ and deciduous trees, among which there are
occasionally picturesque clumps of umbrella pines. The _Pinus Sinensis_
and the _Abies Microsperma_ abound, and there are two species of oak
and three of maple, a _Platanus_, juniper, ash, mountain ash, birch,
hazel, _Sophora Japonica_, _Euonymus alatus_, _Thuja Orientalis_, and
many others. The heliotrope, pink, and scarlet azaleas were in all
their beauty, flushing the hillsides, and white and sulphur-yellow
clematis, actinidia, and a creeping _Euonymus_ were abundant. Of the
wealth of flowering shrubs, mostly white blossomed, I had never seen
one before either in garden or greenhouse, except the familiar syringa
and spirea. The beautiful _Ampelopsis Veitchiana_ was in its freshest
spring green and tender red, concealing tree trunks, depending from
branches, and draping every cliff and rock with its exquisite foliage;
and roses, red and white, of a free-growing, climbing variety, having
possession even of tall trees, hung their fragrant festoons over the
roads.

It was all very charming, though a little wanting in life. True, there
were butterflies and dragon-flies innumerable, and brilliant green
and brown snakes in numbers, and at first the Han was cheery with
mallard and mandarin-duck, geese and common teal. In the rice fields
the imperial crane, the egret, and the pink ibis with the deep flush
of spring on his plumage, were not uncommon, and peregrines, kestrels,
falcons, and buzzards were occasionally seen. But the song-birds
were few. The forlorn note of the night-jar was heard, and the loud,
cheerful call of the gorgeous ringed pheasant to his dowdy mate; but
the trilling, warbling, and cooing which are the charm of an English
copsewood in springtime are altogether absent, the chatter of the blue
magpie and the noisy flight of the warbler being poor substitutes for
that entrancing concert. Of beast life, undomesticated, there were no
traces, and the domestic animals are few. Sheep do not thrive on the
sour natural grasses of Korea, and if goats are kept I never saw any.
A small black pig not much larger than a pug is universal, and there
are bulls and ponies about the better class of farms. There are big
buff dogs, but these are kept only to a limited extent on the Han, in
the idea that they attract the nocturnal visits of tigers. The dogs are
noisy and voluble, and rush towards a stranger as if bent on attack;
but it is mere bravado--they are despicable cowards, and run away
howling at the shaking of a stick.

Leopards, antelopes, and several species of deer are found among the
mountains bordering the Han, but the beast by preëminence there,
as throughout Korea, is the tiger. At first I was very incredulous
regarding his existence and depredations. It was impossible to believe
that peaceful agricultural valleys surrounded by hills, thinly clothed
with dwarf oak scrub, could be ravaged by him, that dogs, pigs, and
cattle are continually carried off by him, and that human beings
visiting each other at night or belated on the roads are his frequent
prey. But the constant repetition of tiger stories, the terror of the
villagers, the refusal of _mapu_ and coolies to travel after dark, the
certainty that in several places the loss of life had been recent,
and that even in the trim settlement of Wön-san a boy and child
had been seized the day before I arrived and had been eaten on the
hillside above the town, have made me a believer. Possibly some of the
depredations attributed to tigers may be really the work of leopards,
which undoubtedly abound, and have been shot even within the walls of
Seoul. High up the Han, in a very lovely lake-like stretch, there is a
village recently deserted because of the persistency with which tigers
had carried off its inhabitants. The Korean tiger, judging from its
skin, in which the long hair grows out of a thick coat of fine fur,
resembles the Manchurian tiger. I have heard of one which measured
13 feet 4 inches, but never saw a skin more than 11 feet 8 inches in
length.

The tiger-hunters form what may be called a brigade or corps, and may
be called on for military service. They were conspicuous objects in
the _Kur-dong_, with their long matchlock guns, loose blue uniforms,
and conical-crowned, broad-brimmed hats. The tiger appears on the
Royal standard, and tigers’ skins are the insignia of high office, the
leopard skins, indicating lower rank. The Chinese give a very high
price for tigers’ bones as a medicine, considering them a specific for
strength and courage. Tiger-hunting as a business seems confined to
the northern provinces. On the Han, and specially along its northern
affluents, are found three if not four species of deer, and the horns,
in the velvet, of the large deer (_Cervus Manchuricus_), which fetch
from forty to sixty dollars a pair, are the prize most wanted by the
hunters. Pheasants are literally without number and are very tame;
I constantly saw them feeding among the crops within a few yards of
the peasants at their work. They are usually brought down by falcons,
which, when well trained, command as high a price as nine dollars. To
obtain them three small birds are placed in a cylinder of loosely woven
bamboo, mounted horizontally on a pole. On the peregrine alighting
on this, a man who has been concealed throws a net over the whole.
The bird is kept in a tight sleeve for three days. Then he is daily
liberated in a room, and trained to follow a piece of meat pulled over
the floor by a string. At the end of a week he is taken out on his
master’s wrist, and slipped when game is seen. He is not trained to
return. The master rushes upon him and secures him before he has time
to devour the bird. A man told me that he sometimes got between twenty
and thirty pheasants a day, but had to walk or run 100 _li_ to do it.
The season was nearly over, yet I bought fine pheasants on the Han for
threepence and fourpence each. They were cheaper than chickens.

The Han itself, rising in the Diamond Mountain of Kong-wön Do, and
formed by a number of nearly parallel affluents, next to the border
river Am-nok, is _the_ river of Korea, which it cuts nearly across,
its eastern extremity being within 25 miles of the Sea of Japan and
its western at Chemulpo. I ascended it to within 40 miles of the Sea
of Japan, and estimate the length of its navigable waters for small
flat-bottomed craft at about 170 miles. A clear bright stream with a
bottom of white sand, golden gravel or rock, chiefly limestone, with an
average width of 250 yards well sustained to the head of navigation,
narrowed at times by walls of rock or divided by grassy islands in its
lower course, full of pebbly shallows, over which it ripples gaily,
its upper waters abounding in rocky rapids, many of them severe and
dangerous, its most marked features, to my thinking, are its absence
of affluents after it emerges from the Diamond Mountain, and its
singular alternations of shallow with very deep water. It was a common
occurrence to have to drag my boat, drawing only 3 inches, through
water too shallow to float her, and at the top of the ripple to come
upon a broad, still, lake-like, deep, green expanse, 20 feet deep,
continuing for a mile or two.

After passing the forks there are 46 rapids, many of them very severe,
before reaching Yöng-Chhun, which for practical purposes may be
regarded as the limit of navigable water.

These are a most serious obstacle in the way of navigation, but as
there is usually a deep water channel in the middle, sailing junks of
25 tons, taking advantage of strong, favorable winds, get up as far
as Tan-Yang. Beyond, boats not twice the size of my _sampan_ must be
used, which are only poled and dragged, and as they must keep near the
shore, among rocks and furious water, their progress is very slow,
not more than 7 miles a day. Nevertheless, the Han, with all its
difficulties and obstructions, is the great artery of communication for
much of Kong-wön-Do and Kyöng-Kivi Do, and for the northeast portion
of Chung-Chöng Do; down it all the excess produce of this great region
goes to Seoul, and nearly all merchandise, salt, and foreign goods
come up it from the sea-board, to pass into the hands of the _posang_,
or merchant pedlars, at various points, and through them to reach the
market-places of the interior. During the first ten days from Han Kang
there were 75 junks a day on an average bound up and down stream.
There is a very large floating population on the Han. There is not a
bridge along its whole length, but communication is kept up by 47 free
ferries, provided by Government.

Not having been able to learn anything about the route or any of its
features, I was much surprised to find a very large population, not
only along the river, but in the parallel valleys, many of them of
great length and extreme fertility, in its neighborhood. It was only
necessary to climb a ridge or hill to see numbers of these, given up
to rice culture, and thickly sprinkled with farming villages. Along
the river banks only, between Han Kang and Yöng-Chhun, there are 176
villages. Much of the soil is rich alluvium, from 5 to 11 feet deep,
and most prolific, bearing two heavy crops a year (not rice lands) with
little or no manure. There is on the whole an air of greater ease and
prosperity about the Han valley than about any other region that I have
seen in Korea.[13]

The people are of fine physique and generally robust appearance. Some
of them had evidently attained great age. There were a few sore eyes
and some mild skin diseases, both produced by dirt, but there were no
sickly-looking people; infants abounded.

Except for a monastery and temple, both Buddhist, not far from
Seoul, and the Confucian temples at the magistracies, there were no
signs of any other cult than that of dæmons. There were two shrines
containing _mirioks_, in both cases water-worn boulders chafed into
some resemblance to humanity; spirit shrines on heights; and under
large trees heaps of stones sacred to dæmons; tall posts, with the tops
rudely cut into something suggestive of distorted human faces, painted
black and blue, with straw ropes with dependent straw tassels, like
those denoting Shinto shrines in Japan, stretched across the road to
prevent the ingress of malignant spirits, and trees with many streamers
of rag, as well as worn-out straw shoes hanging in their branches, as
offerings to these beings.

The dwellings do not vary much, except that the roofs of the better
class are tiled. In villages where there is a resident _yang-ban_
or squire-noble, his house is usually pretentious, and covers a
considerable area, but yields in stateliness to the family tomb, always
on a hill slope, a great grass mound on a grass platform backed by
horseshoe-shaped grass banks, and usually by a number of fine pines.
In front of the mound is invariably a stone altar on two stone drums,
stone posts which support the canopy used when sacrifices are offered
to the spirit of the deceased, and stone lanterns. A few of the grander
tombs are approached by a short avenue of stone figures of warriors,
horses, servants, and sheep.[14]

The peasant’s houses do not differ from those of the poorer classes in
Seoul. The walls are of mud, and the floors, also of mud, are warmed
by a number of flues, the most economical of all methods of heating,
as the quantity of dried leaves and weeds that a boy of ten can carry
keeps two rooms above 70° for twelve hours. Every house is screened
by a fence 6 feet high of bamboo or plaited reeds, and is usually
surrounded by fruit trees. In one room are _ang-pak_, great earthenware
jars big enough to contain a man, in which rice, millet, barley, and
water are kept. That is frequently in small houses the women’s room.
The men’s room has little in it but the mat on the floor, pillows
of solid wood, and large red and green hat-cases ranging from the
rafters, in which the crinoline dress hats are stowed away. Latticed
and paper-covered doors and windows denote a position above that of the
poorest. A pig-stye, much more substantial than the house, is always
alongside of it.

The villages from about 50 _li_ up the Han from Seoul may all be
described as “farming villages.” Lower down they export large
quantities of firewood and charcoal for the daily needs of a capital
which has left itself without a stick available for fuel in its
immediate neighborhood. No special industries exist. The peasants make
their rude wooden ploughs and spades shod with iron, and two villages
within 40 _li_ of Seoul supply them with their _ang-paks_ and culinary
utensils of the same coarse ware, which stands fire and serves instead
of iron pots. Such iron utensils as are used are imported from Seoul
along with salt, and foreign piece goods for dress clothes, and are
paid for with rice, grain, and tobacco.

The people are peasant farmers in the strictest sense, most of them
holding their lands from the _yang-bans_ at their pleasure. The
proprietor has the right to turn them out after harvest, but it does
not seem to be very oppressively exercised. He provides the seed, and
they pay him half the yield. Some men buy land and obtain title-deeds.
In 1894 they paid in taxes on one day’s ploughing, so much for
barley, beans, rice, and cotton, the sum varying; but a new system
of collecting tax on the assessed value of the land has come into
operation, which renders “squeezing” on the part of the tax collector
far more difficult. Money is scarcely current, business transactions
are by barter, or the peasant pays with his labor. His chief outlay
is on foreign piece cottons for his best clothes. These are 30 _cash_
per measure of 20 inches, dearer at Yöng-Wol, the reputed head of
navigation, than at Seoul.

The population of the Han valley is not poor, if by poverty is to be
understood scarcity of the necessaries of life. The people have enough
for themselves and for all and sundry who, according to Korean custom,
may claim their hospitality. Probably they are all in debt; it is very
rare indeed to find a Korean who has not this millstone round his
neck, and they are destitute of money or possessions other than those
they absolutely require. They appear lazy. I then thought them so, but
they live under a _régime_ under which they have no security for the
gains of labor, and for a man to be reported to be “making money,”
or attaining even the luxury of a brass dinner service, would be
simply to lay himself open to the rapacious attentions of the nearest
mandarin and his myrmidons, or to a demand for a loan from an adjacent
_yang-ban_. Nevertheless, the homesteads of the Han valley have a look
of substantial comfort.

Certainly the meals of the _men_ are taken in far greater tidiness than
is usual among laborers. The women, as is the fashion with women, eat
“anyhow,” and gobble up their lords’ leavings. All meals for men are
served on small, circular, dark wooden tables, a few inches high, one
for each person. Rice is the staple of diet, and is served in a great
bowl, but besides this, there are seldom fewer than five or six glazed
earthenware vessels containing savory, or rather tasty, condiments.[15]
Chop-sticks and small flattish spoons of horn or base metal are used
for eating.

In the villages, as distinguished from the hamlets, on the Han there
are schools, but they are not open to the public. Families club
together and engage a teacher, but the pupils are only of the scholarly
class, and only Chinese learning in Wenli is taught, this being the
stepping-stone to official position, the object of the ambition of
every Korean. _En-mun_ is despised, and is not used as a written
language by the educated class. I observed, however, that a great many
men of the lower orders on the river were able to read their own script.

With the exception of two small Buddhist establishments not far from
Seoul, priests are non-existent on the Han, nor is there any Christian
propaganda, Protestant or Roman, at work, though Roman missionaries
were formerly stationed at two points near the forks. Dæmon-worship
prevails throughout the whole region.

The river is frozen for from three to four months in the winter, and
tends to inundate the lower lands for two months in the summer. The
bridle tracks which skirt it and diverge from it are infamous. The
valley has no mails, and of course no newspapers. The Tong-haks
(rebels, or armed reformers) were strong in a region immediately to the
south of the great bend, which showed some dissatisfaction with things
as they were, and a desire for reform in some minds.

So far as I could learn, the region is not rich in ordinary minerals.
I could hear nothing of “the burning earth,” though the geological
formation renders its existence probable. Copper and iron are worked
not far from the north branch to a limited extent. But the Han is the
“River of Golden Sand,” and though the height of the gold season is
after the summer rains, the _auri sacra fames_ even then attracted
gangs of men to the river banks, and gold in the mountains was a
subject on which the Koreans were always voluble.

The attitude of the people was friendly. I never saw a trace of actual
hostility, though on the higher waters of the south branch it was very
doubtful whether they had seen a European before. Their curiosity was
naturally enormous, and whenever the boat tied up for a day it showed
itself by crowds sitting on the bank as close to it as they could get,
staring apathetically. They were frequently timid, and snatched up
their fowls and hid them when we came in sight, but a little friendly
explanation of our honesty of purpose, and above all, the sight of a
few strings of _cash_, usually set everything straight. A foreigner is
absolutely safe. During the ofttimes tedious process of hauling up the
rapids, when Mr. Miller and the servants were tugging at the ropes, I
constantly strolled for two or three hours by myself along the river
bank, and whether the path led through solitary places or through
villages, I never met with anything more disagreeable than curiosity
shown in a very ill-bred fashion, and that was chiefly on the part of
women. When the people understood that they would be paid it was not
difficult to procure the little they had to sell at fairly reasonable
rates. They were disposed to be communicative, and showed very little
suspicion, far less indeed than in parts of Korea where foreigners are
common. My Chinese servant was everywhere an object of most friendly
curiosity and a centre of pleasurable interest.

The mercury during April and May ranged from 42° to 72°, and the
barometer showed remarkable steadiness. There were two heavy rainfalls,
but the weather on the whole was superb, and the atmosphere clear and
dry.

[Illustration: KOREAN PEASANTS AT DINNER.]


FOOTNOTES:

[13] I am inclined to think that Europeans habitually underestimate the
population. The average I obtained is 8 to a house, taking 70 houses
at random, and this estimate is borne out by General Greathouse, for
some years in Korean Government service, and Mr. Moffett, a resident
and traveller in Korea for seven years, both of whom have given some
attention to the subject. It must be understood that a Korean household
rarely, if ever, consists of a man, wife and children only; there are
parents and relationly hangers-on, to say nothing of possible servants.

[14] Such figures where they occur are always spoken of by foreigners
as sheep, but I doubt whether this animal appears at any but royal
tombs, where it is probably represented as offered in sacrifice by the
King.

[15] These remarks apply to every part of Korea which I afterwards saw.




CHAPTER VII

VIEWS AFLOAT


A few hours sufficed for settling in our very narrow quarters, and by
the end of the second day we had shaken down into an orderly routine.
By dint of much driving Kim was induced to start about seven, at
which hour I had my flour and water stirabout. The halts for smoking,
cooking, and eating were many, and about five o’clock he used to
simulate exhaustion, a deception to which his lean form and thin face
with its straight straggling white hair lent themselves effectively.
Then followed the daily wrangle about the place to tie up, Kim
naturally desiring a village and the proximity of junks, with much
nocturnal smoking and gossip, while my wish was for solitude, quiet,
and a pebbly river bottom, and with Mr. Miller’s aid I usually carried
my point. Between Kim’s laziness and the frequent occurrence of rapids,
10 miles came to be considered a good day’s journey! The same rapids
made any settled plan of occupation impossible, yet on the early stages
of the journey, when there were long quiet stretches of water between
them, it was pleasant to elevate the roof and have a quiet morning’s
work till dinner at twelve.

This, it must be confessed, was a precarious meal. Chickens for curry
were not always attainable, and were often so small as to suggest the
egg shell, and the river fish which were sometimes got by pouncing
on a boy fisherman were very minute and bony. Chestnuts often eked
out a very scanty meal. Wong used to hunt along the river banks for
wild onions and carrots, after the stock of the cultivated roots was
exhausted, and he made paste of flour and water, rolled it with a
bamboo on the top of a box, cut it into biscuits with the lid of
a tin, and baked them in the frying-pan. Rice fritters too he made
morning, noon, and night. Afternoon tea of Burrough’s and Wellcome’s
“tabloids” was never omitted, and after tying up came supper, an
impoverished repetition of dinner, the whole a wholesome regimen,
invariably eaten with appetite.

Visiting villages and small towns, only to find the first a collection
of mud hovels, and the last mud hovels with the addition of ruinous
official buildings and a forlorn Confucian temple, climbing to ridges
bordering the Han to get a view of fertile and populous valleys,
conversing with and interrogating the people through Mr. Miller and his
servant, taking geographical notes, temperatures, altitudes, barometric
readings, and measurements of the river (nearly all unfortunately lost
in a rapid on the downward journey), collecting and drying plants,
photographing, and developing negatives under difficulties, all the
blankets and waterproofs in the boat being requisitioned for the
creation of a “dark room”--all these occupations made up busy and
interesting days.

The first two days were spent in turning the flank of the range on
which is the so-called fortress of Nam Han, with its priest soldiers,
one of the four which are supposed to guard Seoul and offer refuge
in times of trouble. On the right bank there are many villages of
farmers, woodcutters, and charcoal burners, and on the left an expanse
of cultivated sandy soil between the mountains and the river, there a
broad rapid stream rippling brightly over white sand or golden gravel.
After passing the Yang-kun magistracy, a large village with a long
street, where a whole fleet of _sampans_ was loading with country
produce for the capital, and a number of junks were unloading salt, the
Han makes a sharp bend to the south, and after a long rapid expands
into a very broad stream. The valley broadens also, and becomes flat,
the hills, absolutely denuded even of scrub, are low, and recede from
the river; their serrated black ridges of rock, and their deeply
scored, corrugated, flushed sides, which spring had scarcely tinged
with green, are forbidding, and though the valley was green with young
wheat, that is quite the most monotonous and uninteresting part of the
journey.

After circumventing the fine fortress summit of Nam Han, the river
enters the mountains. From that time up to the head of possible
navigation, the scenery in its variety, beauty, and unexpectedness
exhausts the vocabulary of admiration.

A short distance above Han Kang is the Buddhist temple, of Ryeng-an
Sa, dedicated to the Dragon, one of the two Buddhist sanctuaries on
the long course of the Han. On the left bank a low stone wall encloses
a spot on which a female dragon alighted from heaven in the days of
the last dynasty, and where still, in times of flood or drought,
sacrifices are offered and libations poured out to “Heaven.” The
only other temple is that of Pyök-chol on the right bank of the Han,
above Yö Ju, four days from Seoul. A steep wooded promontory projects
into the still, deep, green water, crowned with two brick and stone
pagodas. In a wooded dell at the back there are some picturesque and
elaborately carved and painted temples and monastic buildings, and a
fine bell five centuries old, surmounted by an entanglement of dragons,
which, with some medallions on the sides, are of very bold design
and successful workmanship, and the whole is said to have been cast
in Chung-Chöng Do before the Japanese stole the arts and artists! A
pavilion for the temple dramas was occupied for the afternoon by a
large picnic of women and children from Yö Ju. In one of the monastic
courts there is a marble pagoda with some finely executed bas-reliefs
on its sides, claiming a not distant kinship with those of the “marble
pagoda” in Seoul. The establishment consisted of an abbot, nineteen
monks, and four novices. The abbot was the most refined, intellectual,
and aristocratic-looking man that I saw in Korea, with an innate
courtesy and refinement of manner rare anywhere. He carried the weight
of seventy years with much grace and dignity, and made us cordially
welcome. This was the last we saw of Buddhism till we reached the
Diamond Mountain six weeks later.

At the village of Tomak-na-dali, where we tied up, they make the great
purple-black jars and pots which are in universal use. Their method
is primitive. They had no objection to be watched, and were quite
communicative. The potters pursue their trade in open sheds, digging
up the clay close by. The stock-in-trade is a pit in which an uncouth
potter’s wheel revolves, the base of which is turned by the feet of
a man who sits on the edge of the hole. A wooden spatula, a mason’s
wooden trowel, a curved stick, and a piece of rough rag are the tools,
efficient for the purpose. Fifty _li_ higher up, a few _li_ from the
river, are beds of kaolin used in the Government pottery and for the
finer kinds of porcelain.

For two days the Han was about 400 yards wide, with a very tortuous
course, abounding in rapids, shallows, and green islands, with great
expanses of pure white sand on its left bank, and frequent villages of
woodcutters and charcoal burners on both. On the 16th we reached the
forks at the village of Ma-chai. There the north branch, which was to
be afterwards traversed, comes down, and the south branch, in every way
more important, arrives from the southward. Between the two there is a
pretty wooded island then pink with azalea blossom. Beyond is a fine
stretch of alluvium, nearly 6 feet deep, bearing rich crops of barley
and wheat, but entirely unprotected from the desolations of the river
in its annual rise, which engulfs every year acres of this prolific
soil. Ten years ago the Han, altering its course, brought down from the
top of a steep bank at some distance a huge concrete double coffin 9
feet long and 16 inches thick! The great alluvial expanse was make over
to the Buddhists by the King, who receives annually a fixed amount of
the produce.

Between Kim’s laziness and plausibility, and the rapids, which though
not severe were frequent, and the food hunt, which was a necessity,
our progress was slow, and it was not till the 19th of April that we
reached Yö Ju, the first town of any importance and the birthplace of
the late Queen. It is memorable to me as being the first place where
the crowd was obstreperous and obnoxious, though not hostile. It is
humiliating to be a “show” and to get nothing by it! I went out on a
rock in the river in the hope of using the prismatic compass in peace,
and was nearly pushed into the water, and when I went up into the gate
tower a stamping, curious crowd, climbing on everything that afforded a
point of vantage, shook the old fabric so severely that the delicately
balanced needle never came to rest. The crowd was dirty, the streets
were foul and decayed, and worst of all was the magistrate’s _yamen_,
to which we had occasion to go, and where I found that a _kwan-ja_ was
powerless to obtain even common civility.

The _yamen_, though finely situated and enclosing in its grounds
a large and much decorated pavilion for Royal use, but used as a
children’s playground, was in a state of wreck. The woodwork was
crumbling, beams and rafters were falling down, lacquer and paint were
scaling off, torn paper fluttered from the lattice windows, plaster
hung from the grimy walls, the once handsome gate tower was on its
last legs, in the courtyard some flagstones had subsided, others were
exalted, and audacious ragweed and shepherd’s purse grew in their
crevices. Poverty, neglect, and melancholy reigned supreme. Within
the gates were plenty of those persons who suck the lifeblood of
Korea. There were soldiers in Tyrolese hats and coarse cotton uniforms
in which blue predominated, _yamen_ runners in abundance, writers,
officers of _in_justice, messengers pretending to have business on
hand, and many small rooms, in which were many more men sitting on the
floor smoking long pipes, with writing materials beside them.

One attendant, by no means polite, took my _kwan-ja_ to the magistrate,
and very roughly led the way to two small rooms, in the inner one
of which the official was seated on the floor, surrounded by a few
elderly men. We were directed to stand at the opening between the two
rooms, and behind us pressed as many of the crowd as could get in. I
bowed low. No notice was taken. An attendant handed the magistrate
a pipe, so long that it would have been impossible for him to light
it for himself, and he smoked. Mr. Miller hoped that he was in good
health. No reply, and the eyes were never raised. Mr. Miller explained
the object of the visit, which was to get a little information about
the neighborhood. There was only a very curt reply, and as the great
man turned to one of his subordinates and began to talk to him, and
rude remarks were circulating, we took leave with the usual Korean
phrases of politeness, which were not reciprocated.

We were told that there are many “high _yang-bans_” in Yö Ju, and it
seemed natural that the magistrate of a town of only 700 houses should
not be a man of high rank. The story goes that when he came they used
“low talk” to him and ordered him about as their inferior. So he lives
chiefly in Seoul, and the man who sat in sordid state amidst the ruins
of the spacious and elaborately decorated _yamen_ does his work and
divides the spoils, and the _yang-bans_ are left to whatever their
devices may be. But this is not an isolated case. Nearly all the river
magistrates are mainly absentees, and spend their time, salaries,
and squeezings in the capital. I had similar interviews with three
other magistrates. I asked nothing except change in _cash_ for three
_yen_, and on each occasion was told that the treasury was empty. My
_kwan-ja_, a pompous document from the Foreign Office, was of this use
only, it procured me a chicken at a high price in a town where the
people were unwilling to sell!

At Yö Ju I saw for the only time either in Korea or China the interior
of an ancestral temple. It is a lofty building, with a curved tile
roof and blackwood ceiling, approached by a roofed gateway. Opposite
the entrance is an ebony stool, on which are a brass bowl and incense
burner. Above this is a large altar, supporting two candlesticks with
candles, and above that again an ebony stand on which rests a polished
black marble tablet inscribed with the name of the deceased. Behind
that, in a recess in the wall, with elaborate fretwork doors, is his
life-sized portrait in Chinese style. The floor is covered with plain
matting. In the tablet the third soul of the deceased is supposed to
dwell. Food is placed before it three times daily for three years in
the case of a parent, and there the relations, after the expiration of
that period, meet at stated seasons every year and offer sacrifice and
“worship.”

At the large and prosperous-looking village of Chön-yaing the people
told us that a “circus” was about to perform and impelled us towards
it; but finding that it was in the courtyard of a large tiled-roof
mansion, in good repair and of much pretension, we were retiring, when
we were cordially invited to enter, and I was laid hold of (literally)
by the serving-women and dragged through the women’s court and into
the women’s apartments. I was surrounded by fully forty women, old and
young, wives, concubines, servants, all in gala dress and much adorned.
The principal wife, a very young girl wearing some Indian jewellery,
was very pretty and had an exquisite complexion, but one and all were
destitute of manners. They investigated my clothing, pulled me about,
took off my hat and tried it on, untwisted my hair and absorbed my
hairpins, pulled off my gloves and tried them on with shrieks of
laughter, and then, but not till they had exhausted all the amusement
which could be got out of me, they bethought themselves of entertaining
me by taking me through their apartments, crowding upon me to such an
extent as they did so that I was nearly carried off my feet. They took
me through fourteen communicating rooms, with fine parquet floors,
mostly spoiled by being covered in whole or in part with Brussels
tapestry carpets of “loud” and vulgar patterns in hideous aniline dyes.
Great mirrors in tawdry gilt frames glared from the tender coloring
of the walls, and French clocks asserted their expensive vulgarity in
every room.

In the outer court a rope was stretched for the rope-dancers, and
kettledrums and reed-pipes gave promise of such music as Koreans
love. I was escorted across two other courts surrounded by verandas
supported on dressed stone, and with iron railings instead of wood,
to an elevated reception room, where a foreign table and some tawdry
velvet-covered chairs clashed with the tastefulness of the walls and
the fine mats bordered with the Greek fret on the floor. French clocks,
all keeping different time, were much _en évidence_. The host, a youth
of eighteen, eldest son of the governor of one of the most important
governorships in Korea, welcomed us, and seemed anxious to receive us
courteously. Wine, soup, eggs, and _kimchi_, an elaborate sort of “sour
kraut,” were produced, and had to be partaken of, our host meanwhile
smoking an expensive foreign cigar, which gave him an opportunity for
the ostentatious display of a showy diamond ring. He was dressed in
sea-green silk, and wore a hat of very fine quality.

He wanted to see the inside of my camera and to be photographed, for
which purpose we retired to the back of the house to avoid the enormous
crowd which had collected, and which was becoming every moment more
impolite and disorderly. I made him exchange the foreign cigar, vulgar
in a Korean’s mouth, for the national long pipe. At this juncture some
friends came up, hangers-on, who were feasting with him to celebrate
his having obtained a good place in a recent examination, and made a
rudely-worded request for our immediate departure. It was obvious that,
after their unmannerly curiosity had been satisfied, our presence,
and the courteous treatment extended to us, spoilt their amusement.
The ringleader spoke roughly to our host, who turned his back on us
and retired meekly to his own apartments, although he is a son of an
official of the highest rank, and a near relative of the late Queen.
We could only make a somewhat ignominious exit, having been truly
“played out.”

This rage for French clocks, German mirrors, foreign cigars, chairs
upholstered in velvet, and a general foreign tawdriness is spreading
rapidly among the young “swells” who have money to spend, vulgarizing
Korean simplicity, and setting the example to those below them of an
extravagant and purely selfish expenditure. The house, with its many
courtyards, was new and handsome, and money glared from every point. I
was glad to return to the simplicity of my boat, hoping that with the
“plain living, high thinking” might be combined!

Beyond the mountains east of Yö Ju, the Han passes through a noble
stretch of rich alluvium, bearing superb, and fairly clean crops, and
bordered by low, serrated, denuded, and much corrugated ranges, faintly
tinged with green. On this gently rolling plain are many towns and
villages, among the larger of which are Won Ju, Chung Ju, Chöng-phyöng,
and Tan-Yang, all on or near the river, by which they conveniently
export their surplus produce, chiefly beans, tobacco, and rice, and
receive in return their supplies of salt and foreign goods. Even at
that season of low water the traffic was considerable.

Higher up, the scenery changes. Lofty limestone bluffs, often caverned,
rise abruptly from the river, and wall in the fertile and populous
valleys which descend upon it, giving place higher up to grand
basaltic formation, range behind range, terraces of columnar basalt
occasionally appearing. It was a lovely season, warm days, cold nights,
brilliant sunshine, great white masses of sunlit clouds on a sky of
heavenly blue, distances idealized in a blue veil which was not a mist,
flowers at their freshest, every bird that has a note or a cry vocal,
butterflies and red and blue dragon-flies hovering over the grass and
water, fish leaping, all nature awake and jubilant. And every rift and
bluff had its own beauty of blossoming scarlet azaleas, or syringas,
contorted or stately pines, and _Ampelopsis Veitchiana_ rose-pink in
its early leafage. There was a note of gladness in the air.

Eight days above Seoul, on the left bank of the river, there is a
ruinous pagoda built of large blocks of hewn stone, standing solitary
in the centre of a level plain formed by a bend of the Han. The people,
on being asked about it, said, “When Korea was surveyed so long ago
that nobody knows when, this was the centre of it.” They call it the
“Halfway Place.” After that the only suggestions of antiquity are some
stone foundations, and a few stone tombs among the trees, which, from
their shape, may denote the sites of monasteries.

Near that pagoda were a number of men very drunk, and there were few
days on which the habit of drinking to excess was not more or less
prominent. The junkmen celebrated the evening’s rest by hard drinking,
and the crowd which nightly assembled on the shore when we tied up
was usually enlivened by the noisy antics of one or more intoxicated
men. From my observation on the Han journey and afterwards, I should
say that drunkenness is an outstanding feature in Korea. And it
is not disreputable. If a man drinks rice wine till he loses his
reason, no one regards him as a beast. A great dignitary even may
roll on the floor drunk at the end of a meal, at which he has eaten
to repletion, without losing caste, and on becoming sober receives
the congratulations of inferiors on being rich enough to afford such
a luxury. Along with the taste for French clocks and German gilding,
a love of foreign liquors is becoming somewhat fashionable among the
young _yang-bans_, and willing caterers are found who produce potato
spirit rich in fusel oil as “old Cognac,” and a very effervescent
champagne at a shilling a bottle!

The fermented liquors of Korea are probably not unwholesome, but the
liking for them is an acquired taste with Europeans. They vary from a
smooth white drink resembling buttermilk in appearance, and very mild,
to a water-white spirit of strong smell and fiery taste. Between these
comes the ordinary rice wine, slightly yellowish, akin to Japanese
_sake_ and Chinese _samshu_, with a faint, sickly smell and flavor.
They all taste more or less strongly of smoke, oil, and alcohol, and
the fusel oil remains even in the best. They are manufactured from
rice, millet, and barley. The wine-seller projects a cylindrical basket
on a long pole from his roof, resembling the “bush” formerly used in
England for a similar purpose. Probably one reason that the Koreans
are a drunken people is that they scarcely use tea at all even in the
cities, and the luxury of “cold water” is unknown to them. The peasants
drink hot rice water with their meals, honey water as a luxury, and
on festive occasions an infusion of orange peel or ginger. The drying
of orange peel is quite a business with Korean housewives. There were
quantities of it hanging from the eaves of all the cottages.

Up to a short distance above this pagoda, the rapids for which the
Han is famous, though they made our progress slow, had not suggested
serious difficulty, far less risk, but for the remaining fortnight they
were tortuous rocky channels, through which the river, compressed in
width, rushes with great violence and tremendous noise and clatter, or
they are successive broken ledges of rock, with a chaos of flurry and
foam, varied by deep pools, presenting formidable, and at some seasons
insuperable, obstacles to navigation. To all appearance they are far
more dangerous than the celebrated rapids of the Yangtze, and the
remains of timber rafts and junks attest their destructive properties.
They occur at shorter and shorter intervals as the higher waters are
reached, till eventually the Han becomes an unbroken rapid or cataract.

Kim, though paid handsomely, was far too stingy to pay for any help
_en route_, his ropes were manifestly bought in “the cheapest market,”
and though Wong, my powerful _sampan_-man, worked with both strength
and skill, and Mr. Miller and his servant toiled at the tow ropes, and
in great exigencies I gave a haul myself, we sometimes made only 7
miles a day, and ofttimes took two hours to ascend a few yards, two
poling with might and main in the boat, and three tugging with all
their strength on shore. Often the ropes snapped, when the boat went
spinning and flying to the foot of the rapid, sometimes with injury to
herself and her contents, sometimes escaping. After a few of such risks
I habitually landed, either on a boatman’s back or wading in waterproof
Wellingtons, which caused great wonderment in the lookers on. The worst
rapids were always in the most beautiful places, and the strolls and
climbs of three or four hours along the river banks, through fields
with bounteous crops, through odorous Spanish chestnut groves, through
thickets with their fascinating bewilderments of roses, clematis, and
honeysuckle, and past farmhouses with their privacy of bamboo screens,
and deep shade of blossoming fruit trees, were very delightful.

In ten days from Seoul we reach Chöng-phyöng, a town of some
pretensions, where in connection with the _yamen_ is a temple pavilion
with a high white chair, facing a table with candlesticks upon it,
floor, table, and chair deep in dust, though the building is used
regularly for offering prayers and sacrifices for the King. Dust is
not noteworthy in Korea, but the paintings in this temple are. On the
end walls are vivid groups of six noblemen wearing fine horsehair
palace hats with wings, each man holding a piece of folded paper in his
hand, and listening intently as he bends forward towards the chair.
The conception and technique of these paintings are admirable, and the
sunset scenes on the back wall, though inferior in execution, are the
work of a true artist.

Close by is a Royal pavilion hanging over the edge of a high bluff
above the Han, surrounded by superb elms, some of their trunks from 20
to 23 feet in circumference. The view of the fertile valley and of the
mountains beyond is very fine, and the decorative woodwork, painted
in Korean style, has been very handsome; but the phrase “has been”
describes most things Korean, and official squalor and neglect could
scarcely go farther.

At Chöng-phyöng and elsewhere the common people, in spite of their
overpowering curiosity, were not rude, and usually retired to a
respectful distance to watch us eat; but from the class of scholars
who hang on round all _yamens_ we met with a good deal of underbred
impertinence, some of the men going so far as to raise the curtain of
my compartment and introduce their heads and shoulders beneath it,
brow-beating the boatmen when they politely asked them to desist. On
the other hand, men of the non-cultured class showed us various small
attentions, sometimes helping with a haul at the ropes at a rapid, only
asking in return that their wives might see me, a request with which I
always gladly complied. At Chöng-phyöng, so great was female curiosity
that a number of women waded waist deep after the boat to peer under
the mats of the roof, and one of them, scrambling out to a rock for
a final stare, overbalanced herself and fell into deep water. At one
point, in the very early morning, some women presented themselves
at the boat, having walked several _li_ with a present of eggs, the
payment for which was to be a sight of me and my poor equipments, they
having heard that there was a boat with a foreign woman on board. The
old cambric curtains brought from Persia, with a red pattern on a white
ground, always attracted them greatly, and the small Japanese cooking
utensils.

In thirteen days from Seoul we reached Tan-Yang, a magistracy prettily
situated on the left bank of the Han, with a picturesque Confucian
temple on the hill above; and a day later entered upon mountainous
country of extreme beauty. The paucity of tributaries is very marked.
Up to that point, except the north branch, there are but two--one
which joins the Han at the village of Hu-nan Chang, on the right bank,
and is navigable for 60 _li_, as far as the important town of Wan Ju;
and another, which enters 2 _li_ above the picturesquely-situated
village of So-il, on the left bank. Above Tan-Yang the river forms
long and violent rapids, alternating with broad stretches of blue,
quiet water from 10 to 20 feet deep, rolling majestically, making sharp
and extraordinary bends among lofty limestone precipices. Villages
on natural terraces occur constantly, the lower terrace planted with
mulberry or weeping willows. Hemp is cultivated in great quantities,
and is used for sackcloth for mourners’ wear, bags, and rope. In my
walks along the river I had several opportunities of seeing the curious
method of separating the fibre, rude and primitive, but effectual.
At the bottom of a stone paved pit large stones are placed, which
are heated from a rough oven at the side. The hemp is pressed down
in bundles upon these, and stakes are driven in among them. Piles of
coarse Korean grass are placed over the hemp, and earth over all, well
beaten down. The stakes are then pulled up and water is poured into
the holes left by them. This, falling on the heated stones, produces a
dense steam, and in twenty-four hours the hemp fibre is so completely
disintegrated as to be easily separated.

A grand gorge, 3 miles long, with lofty cliffs of much caverned
limestone, varied by rock needles draped with _Ampelopsis_ and
clematis, and giving foothold to azaleas, spirea, syringa, pear,
hawthorn, climbing roses, wistaria, cyclamen, lycopodium, yellow
vetches, many _Labiatæ_, and much else, contains but one village,
piled step above step in a deep wooded fold of the hills, on which
millet culture is carried to a great height, on slopes too steep to be
ploughed by oxen. This gorge opens out on slopes of rich soil, some of
which is still uncultivated. The hamlets are small, and grow much hemp,
and each has its hemp pit. They also grow _Urtica Nivea_, from the
bleached fibre of which their grass-cloth summer clothes are made. All
these are surrounded with mulberry groves.

The large village of Cham-su-ki, at the head of two severe rapids, in
ascending which our ropes snapped three times, offers a good example
of the popular belief in spirits. It is approached under a tasselled
straw rope, one end of which is wound round a fine tree with a stone
altar below it. On another rope were suspended a few small bags
containing offerings of food. If a person dies of the pestilence or
by the roadside, or a woman dies in childbirth, the spirit invariably
takes up its abode in a tree. To such spirits offerings are made on the
stone altar of cake, wine, and pork, but where the tree is the domicile
of the spirit of a man who has been killed by a tiger, dog’s flesh
is offered instead of pork. The Cham-su-ki tree is a fine well-grown
elm. Gnarled trees, of which we saw several on hilltops and sides,
are occupied by the spirits of persons who have died before reaching
a cycle, _i.e._ sixty years of age. A steep cliff above Cham-su-ki is
also denoted as the abode of dæmons by a straw rope and a stone altar.

We had some very cold and windy days near the end of April, the mercury
falling to 34°, and one night of tempestuous rain. It would be absurd
to write of sufferings, but at that temperature in an open boat, with
the roof lifting and flapping and threatening to take its departure, it
was impossible to sleep. Afterwards the weather was again splendid.

Abrupt turns, long rapids full of jagged rocks, long stretches of deep,
still water, abounding in fish, narrow gorges walled in by terraces of
basalt, lateral ravines disclosing fine snow-streaked peaks, succeeded
each other, the shores becoming less and less peopled, while the
parallel valleys abounded in fairly well-to-do villages. Just below
a long and dangerous rapid we stopped to dine, and though the place
seemed quite solitary, a crowd soon gathered, and sat on the adjacent
stones talking noisily, trying to get into the boat, lifting the mats,
discussing whether it were polite to watch people at dinner, some
taking one side and some another, those who were half tipsy taking the
affirmative. Some said that they had got news from several miles below
that this great sight was coming up the river, and it was a shame to
deprive them of it by keeping the curtains down. After a good deal
of obstreperousness, mainly the result of wine, a man overbalanced
himself and fell into the river, which raised a laugh, and then they
followed us good-naturedly up the rapid, one man helping to track, and
asking as his reward that his wife might see me, on which I exhibited
myself on the bow of the boat.

At the village of Pang-wha San, built, contrary to Korean practice,
on a height of 800 feet, there is a stone platform, on which was
nightly lighted one of that chain of beacon-fires terminating at
Nam-San in Seoul, which assured the King that his kingdom was at
peace.[16] Another village, Ha-chin, was impressive from the frightful
ugliness of its women. After leaving Tan-Yang the curiosity increased.
People walked great distances to see us, saying they had never seen
foreigners, and bringing eggs to pay for the sight, which I paid for,
telling the people that we had nothing to show; but extravagant rumors
of what was to be seen in the boat had preceded us, and as the people
assembled at daylight and generally waited patiently, I always yielded
to their wishes, raised the thatch, and made the most of the red and
white curtains. In one place I gave them some tea to drink. They had
never seen it, and thought it was medicine, and on tasting it said, “It
must be very good for indigestion!”


FOOTNOTES:

[16] The telegraph has now superseded this picturesque arrangement.




CHAPTER VIII

NATURAL BEAUTY--THE RAPIDS


In superb weather, and in the full glory of spring, we continued the
exploration of the Han above Tan-Yang, encountering innumerable rapids,
some of them very severe and horrible to look upon. The river valley,
continually narrowing into gorges, rarely admits of hamlets, and the
population is relegated to lateral and parallel valleys. On the 30th
of April we tugged and poled the boat up seven long and severe rapids,
with deep still stretches of water between them. The flora increased in
variety, and the shapes of the mountains became very definite. Among
other trees there were a large branching _Acanthopanax ricinifolia_,
two species of euonymus, mistletoe on the walnut and mulberry, the
_Rhus semi-alata_ and _Rhus vernicifera_, pines, firs, the _Abies
microsperma_, the _Actinidia pueraria_, _Elæagnus_, Spanish chestnuts
in great groves, alders, birches, maples, elms, limes, and a tree
infrequently seen which I believe to be a _Zelkawa_. Among the flowers,
there were marigolds, buttercups, scentless white and purple violets,
yellow violas, white aconite, lady’s slipper, hawkweed, camomile,
red and white dandelions, guelder roses, wygelias, mountain peonies,
martagon and tiger lilies, gentians, pink spirea, yellow day lilies,
white honeysuckle, the _Iris Rossii_, and many others.

The day after leaving Tan-Yang we entered on the most beautiful part
of the river. Great limestone cliffs swing open at times to reveal
glorious glimpses, through fantastic gorges, of peaks and ranges,
partly forest-covered, fading in the far distance into the delicious
blue veil of dreamland; the river, occasionally compressed by its
colossal walls, vents its fury in flurry and foam, or expands into
broad reaches 20 and even 30 feet in depth, where pure emerald water
laps gently upon crags festooned with roses and honeysuckle, or in
fairy bays on pebbly beaches and white sand. The air was full of
gladness. The loud call of the fearless ringed pheasant was heard
everywhere, bees hummed and butterflies and dragon-flies flashed
through the fragrant air. What mattered it that our ropes broke three
times, that we stuck on a rock in a rapid and hung there for an hour in
a deafening din and a lather of foam, and that we “beat the record” in
only making 5 miles in twelve hours!

The limestone cliffs are much caverned, and near the village of To-tam,
where they fall back considerably from the river, we explored one
cave worthy of notice, with a fine entrance arch 43 feet in height,
admitting into a vault considerably higher, with a roof of stalagmites.
We ascended this cavern for 315 feet, and then had to return for lack
of light. Near the mouth a natural shaft and rock-ladder give access to
a fine upper gallery 12 feet high, only 60 feet of which we were able
to investigate. Just above To-tam there is another limestone freak on
the river bank, a natural bridge or arch, 127 feet in height and 30
feet wide, below which a fair green lawn slopes up to a height above.
The bridge is admirably buttressed, and draped with roses, honeysuckle,
and clematis, and various fantastic specimens of coniferæ grow out of
its rifts.

The beauty of the Han culminates at To-tam in the finest river view
I had then ever seen, a broad stretch, with a deep bay and lofty
limestone cliffs, between which, on a green slope, the picturesque,
deep-eaved, brown-roofed houses of the village are built. The gray
cliff is crowned with a goodly group of umbrella pines, in Korea called
“Parasol Pines,” because they resemble in shape those carried before
the King. Guarding the entrance of the bay are three picturesque jagged
pyramidal rocks much covered with the _Ampelopsis Veitchiana_, and of
course sacred to dæmon-worship. These sentinels are from 40 to 83 feet
high. To the southwest the Han, dark and deep, rolls out of sight round
a pine-clad bluff, among the magnificent ranges of the Sol-rak-San
mountains--masses of partially pine-clothed peaks and pinnacles of
naked rock. To the northeast the river makes an abrupt bend below
superb limestone cliffs, and disappears at the foot of Sölmi-San, a
triplet of lofty peaks. To-tam on its park-like slopes embraces this
view, and were it not for the rapids and their delays and risks, might
be a delightful summer resort from Seoul.

There is fertility as well as grandeur, for the ridge behind the
village, abrupt on the riverside, falls gently down on the other to
a broad, well-watered level valley, cultivated for rice with extreme
neatness and care, and which, after gladdening the eye with its
productiveness for several miles, winds out of view among the mountains.

There, and in most parts of the Han valley, I was much surprised with
the neatness of the cultivation. It was not what the reports of other
travellers had led me to expect, and it gives me the impression that
the river passes through one of the most productive and prosperous
portions of Korea. The crops of wheat and barley were usually superb,
and remarkably free from weeds--in fact, the cleanliness would do
credit to “high farming” in the Lothians. It was no uncommon thing
to find from 12 to 18 stalks as the product of one grain. At the
end of April the barley was in ear, and beginning to change color,
and the wheat was 6 inches high. As a general rule the stones were
carefully picked off the land and were used for retaining walls
for the rice terraces, or piled in heaps. Steep hillsides were
being cleared of scrub and stones for cotton planting, and in many
instances the cultivation is carried to a height of 1,000 feet, the
cultivators always, however, living in the holes. All the parallel
valleys are neatly and carefully cultivated. The favorable climate,
with its abundant, but not superabundant, rainfall, renders irrigation
needless, except in the case of rice. Every valley has its streamlet,
and is barred across by dykes of mud from its head down to the Han,
rice, with tobacco, beans, hemp, and cotton, being the great articles
of export. On the whole, I was very agreeably surprised with the
agriculture of the Han valley, and doubt not that it is capable of
enormous development if the earnings of industry were secure. The
soil is most prolific, heavy crops being raised without the aid of
fertilizers.

After leaving beautiful To-tam, the rapids become more and more
frequent and exasperating, and when Kim sank down, playing upon my
feelings by well-simulated exhaustion, I feared it would soon become
real. The ropes broke frequently, and the constant scraping and bumping
over rocks increased the leakiness of the boat so much, that in a
lovely reach, where crystal water rippled on the white sand, I pitched
my tent, and unloaded and beached the craft for repairs. In one strong
deep rapid that day the rope parted, and the boat swirled down the
surges, striking rocks as she spun down with such effect as to spoil a
number of photographic negatives and soak my bedding.

At the beautifully situated village of Pa-ka Mi, a post bore the
following inscription in large characters--“If any servant of a
_yang-ban_ passing through Pa-ka Mi is polite and behaves well, all
right, but if he behaves badly he will be beaten,” an assertion of
independence as refreshing as it is rare!

For among the curses of Korea is the existence of this privileged class
of _yang-bans_ or nobles, who must not work for their own living,
though it is no disgrace to be supported by their relations, and who
often live on the clandestine industry of their wives in sewing and
laundry work. A _yang-ban_ carries nothing for himself, not even his
pipe. _Yang-ban_ students do not even carry their books from their
studies to the classroom. Custom insist that when a member of this
class travels he shall take with him as many attendants as he can
muster. He is supported on his led horse, and supreme helplessness
is the conventional requirement. His servants brow-beat and bully the
people and take their fowls and eggs without payment, which explains
the meaning of the notice at Pa-ka Mi.[17]

There is no doubt that the people, _i.e._ the vast mass of the
unprivileged, on whose shoulders rests the burden of taxation, are
hard pressed by the _yang-bans_, who not only use their labor without
paying for it, but make merciless exactions under the name of loans.
As soon as it is rumored or known that a merchant or peasant has laid
up a certain amount of _cash_, a _yang-ban_ or official seeks a loan.
Practically it is a levy, for if it is refused the man is either thrown
into prison on a false charge and whipped every morning until he or
his relations pay the sum demanded, or he is seized and practically
imprisoned on low diet in the _yang-ban’s_ house until the money is
forthcoming. It is the best of the nobles who disguise their exactions
under the name of loans, but the lender never sees principal or
interest. It is a very common thing for a noble, when he buys a house
or field, to dispense with paying for it, and no mandarin will enforce
payment. At Paik-kui Mi, where I paid off my boatmen, the _yang-ban’s_
servants were impressing all the boats for the purpose of taking
roofing tiles to Seoul without payment. Kim begged me to give him some
trifle to take down the river, with a few _cash_ as payment, and a line
to say that the boat was in my employment, service with a foreigner
being a protection from such an exaction.

There were two days more of most severe toil, in which it was scarcely
possible to make any progress. The rapids were frightful, and when we
reached a very bad one below the town of Yöng-chhun, Kim, after making
several abortive efforts, not, I think, in good faith, to ascend it,
collapsed, and said he could not get up any higher. At another season
boats of light draught can ascend to Yang-wöl, 20 _li_ farther. We
had performed a great feat in getting up to Yöng-chhun in early May.
There were no boats on the higher waters, and for much of the distance
my _sampan_ could hardly be said to be afloat. At Yöng-chhun we were
within 40 miles of the Sea of Japan.

Wind and heavy rain which raised the river forbade all locomotion
until the following evening, when we crossed the Han and reached the
Yöng-chhun ferry by a pretty road through a village and a wood, most
attractive country, with many novelties in its flora. At the ferry a
still expanse of the Han is over 10 feet deep, but the roar of another
rapid is heard immediately above. A double avenue of noble elms with
fine turf underneath them leads to the town, a magistracy of 1,500
people, a quiet market-place without shops, situated in a rich farming
basin of alluvial soil, covered in May with heavy crops of barley and
wheat, among which were fields hillocked for melons.

The magistracy buildings are large and rambling, with what has been
a fine entrance gate, with a drum and other instruments of aural
torture for making the deafening din with which the _yamen_ is closed
and opened at sunrise and sunset. There are many stone tablets (not
spontaneously erected) to worthy officials, a large enclosure in which
sacrifices are offered to “Heaven” (probably to the Spirits of the
Land), a Confucian temple, and a king’s pavilion, all very squalid and
ruinous.

A crowd not altogether polite followed us to the _yamen_, where I
hoped that some information regarding an overland route to the Diamond
Mountain might be obtained. On entering the _yamen_ precincts the
underling officials were most insolent, and it was only after enduring
their unpleasant behavior for some time that we were conducted to a
squalid inner room, where a deputy-mandarin sat on the floor with
a smoking apparatus beside him, a man with a scornful and sinister
physiognomy, who took not the slightest notice of us, and when he
deigned to speak gave curt replies through an underling, while we stood
outside the entrance, withstanding with difficulty the pressure of the
crowd, which had surged in after us, private interviews being rare in
the East. This was my last visit to a Korean _yamen_.

As we walked back to the town, the crowd followed us closely, led by
some “swells” of the literary class. One young man came up behind me
and kicked me on the ankle, stepping back and then coming forward and
repeating the offense. He was about to give me a third kick, when
Mr. Miller turned round and very quietly, without anger, dealt him a
scientific blow on the chest, which sent him off the road upon his back
into a barley field. There was a roar of laughter from the crowd, and
the young bully’s companions begged Mr. Miller not to punish him any
more. The crowd dispersed, the bullies, cowards like all their species,
fell far behind, and we had a pleasant walk back to the ferry, where,
although we had to wait a long time in the ferryboat, there was no
assemblage, and the ferryman and passengers were very civil. Mr. Miller
regretted the necessity for inflicting punishment. It was Lynch law no
doubt, but it was summary justice, and the perfect coolness with which
it was administered would no doubt leave a salutary impression. The
ferryman told us that a tiger had carried off a pig from Yöng-chhun the
previous night, and said that the walk to our boat through the wood
without lanterns was very unsafe. Our boatmen had become alarmed and
were hunting for us with torches. The circumstances were eerie, and I
was glad to see the lights.

Ferries are free. The Government provides the broad, strong boats
which are used for ferrying cattle as well as people, and the villages
provide the ferrymen with food. Passengers who are not poor usually
give a small _douceur_.

A gale of wind with torrents of rain set in that night, and the rain
continued till the next afternoon, giving me an opportunity of seeing
more of the detail of the magnificent cliffs of laminated limestone,
which occur frequently, and are the most striking geological features
of the Han valley, continually presenting the appearance of the leaves
of a colossal book. Above the Yöng-chhun rapid, on a steep and almost
inaccessible declivity, buttressed by these cliffs, are the remains
of a very ancient fortress, the outer wall of which, enclosing the
summit of the hill, is 2,500 feet in circumference, 25 feet high on the
outside, from 1 to 12 feet on the inside, and from 9 to 12 feet thick.
It is so arranged that its two gates, which open on nearly direct
descents of 20 feet, and are approached by very narrow pathways, could
only admit one man at a time. It was obviously incapable of reduction
by any force but starvation. No mortar is used in the walls, which
are very efficiently built of small slabs of stone never more than 6
inches thick. The people have no traditions of its construction, but
Mr. Miller, who is familiar with the fortresses of Nam-San and Puk-han,
thinks that it is of a much earlier date than either. One of the signal
fire stations is visible from this point on the river.

On the 3rd of May we began the descent of the Han. The worn-out ropes
were used for the cooking fire, the poles were stowed away, and paddles
took their place. The heavy rains had raised the river a foot, and
changed its bright waters into a turbid flood, down which we often
descended in two minutes distances which had taken two laborious hours
on the upward journey, flying down the centre of the stream instead of
crawling up the sides. Many small disasters occurred. Several times the
boat was nearly swamped by heavy surges, or shivered by striking sunken
rocks; or, losing steerage way, spun round and round, progressing
downwards with many gyrations, usually stern foremost, amidst billows
and foam, but Kim, who was at his best on such occasions, usually
contrived to bring her to shore, bow on, at the foot of the rapid.
On one occasion, however, in a long rapid, in which the surges were
high and strong, by some mismanagement, regarding which the boatmen
quarrelled for an hour afterwards, the _sampan_ shipped such heavy seas
from both sides as nearly to swamp her. I was all but washed off my
camp-bed, which was on a level with the gunwale; a number of sheets
of geographical notes were washed away, some instruments belonging to
the R.G.S. were drowned in their box, more than forty photographic
negatives were destroyed, and clothing, bedding, and flour were all
soaked! The rapids were in fact most exciting, and their risks throw
those of the Fu and the Yangtze from Cheng-tu to Ichang quite into the
shade.

In spite of a delay of half a day at Tan-Yang, owing to a futile
attempt to get _cash_ for silver, and another half-day spent in
beaching and repairing the boat, which had been badly bumped on a rock,
we did the distance from Nang-chhön to Ma-chai on the forks in four and
a half days, or less than a third of the time taken by the laborious
ascent.

The penniless situation became so serious that one day before reaching
Ma-chai I had to decide on returning to Seoul for _cash_! The
treasuries were said to be empty; no one believed in silver or knew
anything about it, and supplies could not be obtained. Fortunately
we arrived at the market-place of Ma-Kyo, a village of 1,850 people,
on the market-day, and the pedlars gladly exchanged _cash_ for 35
silver _yen_ at the rate of 3,000, and would willingly have changed
70. It took six men to carry the coin to the boat, which was once
more substantially ballasted. Ma-Kyo is the river port of Che-chön,
and has an unusually flourishing aspect, boasting of many good houses
with tiled roofs. It exports rice, beans, and grain from the very rich
agricultural country on both sides of the river, and imports foreign
cottons, Korean sackcloth, and salt. Cotton in 20 _cash_ the measure of
20 inches dearer at Ma-Kyo than in Seoul, and at Nang-chhön 70 _cash_
dearer.

When we reached the forks at Ma-chai, the boatmen, who were tired of
the trip, wanted to go back, but eventually they were induced to fulfil
their contract, and we entered the north branch of the Han on a cool,
glorious afternoon, following on a night and morning of wind and rain.
This north branch also rises in the Keum-kang San or Diamond Mountain
in the province of Kong-wön, and after a turbulent course of about
98 miles unites with the southern and larger branch of the Han about
two days’ journey from Seoul. For a considerable distance the country
which it drains is populous and well cultivated, and the hills of its
higher reaches provide much of the timber which is used in Seoul, as
well as a large proportion of the firewood and charcoal. The timber is
made up into very peculiar rafts, which come down at high water, but
even then are frequently demolished in the rapids. The river widens out
above Ma-chai, and for a considerable distance has an average breadth
of 440 yards, but as a rule it is shallow, and its bottom dangerously
rocky, and it has incessant rapids full of jagged rocks, some of which
are very dangerous, and so “ugly” that as I went up them I was truly
glad that I had not to descend them. Many a long, hard tug and broken
hawser we had, but succeeded in hauling the _sampan_ 7 miles above the
limit of low water navigation, which is the same distance from the
termination of boat traffic at high water. I estimate the distance
from Ma-chai to Ut-Kiri, where further progress was stopped by an
insurmountable rapid, at 76 miles, which took nine days, though Kim and
his man, anxious to go home, worked much harder than on our earlier
trip.

For the first few days there are villages every quarter of a mile,
and lateral and parallel valleys, then rich in clean crops of barley
and wheat. The river villages are surrounded by groves of Spanish
chestnut, mulberry, cherry, persimmons, and weeping willows. There are
deep crateriform cavities, now full of trees and abundant vegetation.
The hills are covered with oak scrub, affording cover for tigers,
which appear to abound. The characteristics of the villages and the
agriculture hardly vary from those on the south branch, except that the
potato is more extensively grown. The absence of provincial and local
peculiarities is a feature of Korea. An alley in Seoul may serve for a
village street anywhere else.

Gold in small quantities is found along the river, and rumor says that
Ur-röp-so, a conical hill near the dangerous rapid of Chum-yöl, is
rich in it, but that the district official prohibits digging. Higher
up a number of men were washing for gold. Their apparatus consists of
a wooden sieve or gridiron, on which the supposed auriferous earth
is placed above a deep wooden tray, and rocked under water till the
heavier stuff passes through, to be again rocked in search of the
glittering particles. The results are placed on the river bank in
pieces of broken pottery, each watched by a man. The earth is obtained
by removing the heavy shingle of the river bank and digging up the
sand to a depth of about 2 feet, when rock is reached. From 60 to 100
trays are equal to a bushel and a half, and the yield of this quantity
averages half a thimbleful of gold in a state of fine subdivision.
These gold-washers seldom make more than 16s. per month, and only about
50s. when working in the best goldfields.

Gold ornaments are rarely seen in Korea, gold is scarcely if at all
used in the arts (if arts there are), and gold coins do not exist.
Nevertheless, as is shown by the Customs Reports, the quantity of gold
dust exported, chiefly to Japan, is very far from being despicable,
although the reefs which presumably contain the metal, of which the
washings are the proof, have not yet been touched. The fees paid by
the miners to the Government vary with the locality. Gold-digging
without Government authorization is prohibited by law under most severe
penalties. Among the richest goldfields in Korea are Phyöng Kang,
not far from the Han, and Keum-San in Phyöng-an Do, not far from the
Tai-döng. The larger washings collect as elsewhere the scum of the
country, and riots often occur among the miners. I know not on which
subject the Korean is the more voluble, tigers or gold. He is proud
of Korea as a gold-producing country, and speaks as if its dust were
golden sand!

The groves of Spanish chestnuts with which the North Han is fringed
gave off an overpowering odor. Their fruit is an important article of
diet. Usually the arable land below the villages is little more than a
terrace, but on the hillsides above the grain rippled in long yellow
waves in the breeze, and the hills constantly swing apart and reveal
terraced valleys and brown orchard embowered hamlets; or slightly
receding, expose stretches of white sand or heaps of fantastic boulders.

After two days of severe work we reached the beautifully situated town
of Ka-phyöng, which straggles along the valley of a small tributary
of the Han on slopes backed by high mountains which, following the
usual Korean custom, are without names. The bright green of the wheat
fields, varied by the darker green of clumps of conifers and chestnuts,
arranged as if by a landscape gardener, and the lines of trees along
the river bank were enchanting, but Ka-phyöng does not bear close
inspection. The telegraph wire from Seoul to Wön-san crosses the
river at Sin-gang Kam, and there is actually a telegraph station at
Chun-chön, the most important town of that region, at which messages
are received and sent about once a month!

Chun-chön is four miles from the Han on its left bank. It is fortified,
and has nominally a garrison of 300 men. Having a population of 3,000,
and being in the centre of a fine agricultural district, it is a place
of some trade, as trade is understood in Korea. Just below it the Han,
after running for some distance below a lofty quartz ridge, makes an
abrupt turn and penetrates it, the walls of the passage having the
regularity of a railway cutting, while the bed of the stream is of pure
white quartz.

Beyond this singular gateway the river valley opens out, and the
spectacle, rare in Korea, of cattle is to be seen. Indeed, I only once
saw cattle feeding elsewhere. The grass is coarse and sour, and hand
feeding is customary. It was most pleasant to be awoke in the dewy
morning by bellowing of cattle, shouts and laughter of boys and yelping
of dogs, as bulls old and young were driven to the river bank to be
tethered in the flowery grass. The frolicsome bull calves, which are
brought up in the Korean home, and are attended to by the children, who
are their natural playmates, develop under such treatment into that
maturity of mingled gentleness and stateliness which is characteristic
of the Korean bull,--the one grand thing remaining to Korea. When full
grown a bull can carry from 350 to 500 lbs. They are fed on boiled
beans, cut millet stalks, and cut pea haulm, and the water in which
the beans are boiled. They are led by a rope passed round the horns
from a bamboo ring in the nose. The prevailing color is a warm red, and
the huge animal in build much resembles the shorthorn. The Korean cow,
which is to be seen carrying loads in Northern Korea, is a worthy dam
of such a splendid progeny.

The scenery, though always pretty, becomes monotonous after a few
days, and monotonous too were the adventures in the rapids, which were
innumerable, and the ceaseless toiling, dragging, and tugging they
involved. Reaching Won-chön, a post station on the road to Wön-san,
we halted and engaged horses for a land journey, at a very high rate,
but they and their _mapu_ or grooms turned out well, and as Wong
sententiously remarked, “If you pay well, you will be served well.” The
agreement, which I caused to be put into writing, and which I made use
of in other journeys, with much mutual satisfaction, was duly signed,
and we continued the boat journey.

After spending half a day at the prefectural town of Nang-chhön,
where I am glad to record that the officials were very courteous, we
ascended the Han to a point above the wild hamlet of Ut-Kiri, on a
severe rapid full of jagged rocks. Ut-Kiri is above the head of low
water navigation, but in two summer months during the rains small boats
can reach Ku-mu-nio, “the last village,” 20 _li_ higher. It was a wild
termination of the long boat journey. An abrupt turn of the river,
and its monotonous prettiness is left behind, and there is a superb
mountain view of saddleback ridges and lofty gray peaks surrounding
a dark expanse of water, with a margin of gray boulders and needles
of gray rock draped with the _Ampelopsis_, a yellow clematis, and a
white honeysuckle. It was somewhat sad not to be able to penetrate the
grim austerity to the northward, but the rapids were so severe and the
water ofttimes so shallow that it was impossible to drag the _sampan_
farther, though at that time she only drew 2 inches of water. From
Ma-chai on the forks she had been poled and dragged up forty rapids,
making eighty-six on the whole journey.

From the thinly peopled solitudes of these upper waters we descended
rapidly, though not without some severe bumps, to the populous river
banks, where villages are half hidden among orchards and chestnut and
mulberry groves, and the crops are heavy, and that abundance of the
necessaries of life which in Korea passes for prosperity is the rule.

Ta-rai, a neat, prosperous place of 240 people, among orchards, and
hillsides terraced and bearing superb crops, is an example of the
riverine villages. Its houses are built step above step along the sides
of a ravine, down which a perennial stream flows, affording water power
for an automatic rice hulling machine. For exports and imports the
Han at high water is a cheap and convenient highway. The hill slopes
above the village, with their rich soil, afford space for agricultural
expansion for years to come. And not to dwell altogether on the
material, there is a shrine of much repute on a fork-like slope near
the river. It contains a group of _mirioks_, in this case stones worn
by the action of water into the semblance of human beings. The central
figure, larger than life, may even to a dull imagination represent a
person carrying an infant, and its eyes, nose, and mouth are touched
in with China ink. It is surrounded by Phallic symbols and _mirioks_,
which may be supposed to represent children, and women make prayers
and offerings in this shrine in the hope of obtaining a much coveted
increase in their families, for male children are still regarded as a
blessing in Korea, and “happy is the man that hath his quiver full of
them.”

Ka-phyöng again, a small prefectural town of 400 houses 1¹⁄₂ miles
from the river, is a good specimen of the small towns of the Han
valley, with a ruinous _yamen_, of course, with its non-producing mob
of hangers-on. It is on the verge of an alluvial plain, rolling up to
picturesque hills, gashed by valleys, abounding in hamlets surrounded
by chestnut groves and careful cultivation. The slopes above Ka-phyöng
break up into knolls richly wooded with conifers and hard-wood trees,
fringing off into clumps and groups which would not do discredit to the
slopes of Windsor. The people of a large district bring their produce
into the town, and barter it for goods in the market. The telegraph
wire to Wön-san crosses the affluent on which Ka-phyöng is built, and
is carried along a bridle path which for some _li_ runs along the
river bank. Junks loaded 10 feet above their gunwales, as well as 4
feet outside of them with firewood, and large rafts were waiting for
the water to rise. Boats were being built and great quantities of the
strong rope used for towing and other purposes, which is made from a
“creeper” which grows profusely in Central Korea, were awaiting water
carriage. Yet Ka-phyöng, like other small Korean towns, has no life or
go. Its “merchants” are but pedlars, its commercial ideas do not rise
above those of the huckster, and though poverty, as we understand it,
is unknown, prosperity as we understand it is absent. There are no
special industries in any of the riverine towns, and if they were all
to disappear in some catastrophe it would not cause a ripple on the
surface of the general commercial apathy of the country.

Similar remarks apply to the prefectural town of Nang-chhön, where we
again wasted some hours, while Kim’s rice was first bargained for and
then cleaned. At that point there is a fine deep stretch of the river
230 yards broad abounding in fish. From Nang-chhön we dropped down the
Han to a deep and pretty bay on which the small village of Paik-kui Mi
is situated, where we halted for Sunday, our last day in the _sampan_,
which had been a not altogether comfortless home for five weeks and a
half.


FOOTNOTES:

[17] Class privileges are now abolished, on paper at least, but their
tradition carries weight.




CHAPTER IX

KOREAN MARRIAGE CUSTOMS


Paik-kui Mi was not without a certain degree of life on that Sunday.
A _yang-ban’s_ steward impressed boats for the gratuitous carriage
of tiles to Seoul, which caused a little feeble excitement among the
junkmen. There was a sick person, and a _mu-tang_ or female exorcist
was engaged during the whole day in the attempt to expel the malevolent
dæmon which was afflicting him, the process being accompanied by the
constant beating of a drum and the loud vibrating sound of large
cymbals. Lastly, there was a marriage, and this deserves more than a
passing notice, marriage, burial, and exorcism, with their ceremonials,
being the outstanding features of Korea.[18]

The Korean is nobody until he is married. He is a being of no account,
a “hobbledehoy.” The wedding-day is the entrance on respectability and
manhood, and marks a leap upwards on the social ladder. The youth,
with long abundant hair divided in the middle and plaited at the back,
wearing a short, girdled coat, and looking as if he had no place in
the world though he may be quite grown up, and who is always taken
by strangers for a girl, is transformed by the formal reciprocal
salutations which constitute the binding ceremony of marriage. He has
received the tonsure, and the long hair surrounding it is drawn into
the now celebrated “topknot.” He is invested with the _mangan_, a
crownless skullcap or fillet of horsehair, without which, thereafter,
he is never seen. He wears a black hat and a long full coat, and
his awkward gait is metamorphosed into a dignified swing. His boy
companions have become his inferiors. His name takes the equivalent of
“Mr.” after it; honorifics must be used in addressing him--in short,
from being a “nobody” he becomes a “somebody.”

A girl by marrying fulfils her “manifest destiny.” Spinsterhood
in Korea is relegated to the Buddhist nunneries, where it has no
reputation for sanctity. Absolutely secluded in the inner court of
her father’s house from the age of seven, a girl passes about the
age of seventeen to the absolute seclusion of the inner rooms of her
father-in-law’s house. The old ties are broken, and her husband’s home
is thenceforth her prison. It is “custom.” It is only to our thinking
that the custom covers a felt hardship. It is needless to add that the
young couples do not choose each other. The marriage is arranged by the
fathers, and is consented to as a matter of course. A man gains the
reputation of being a neglectful father who allows his son to reach
the age of twenty unmarried. Seventeen or eighteen is the usual age at
which a man marries. A girl may go through the marriage ceremony as a
mere child if her parents think an “eligible” may slip through their
fingers, but she is not obliged to assume the duties of wifehood till
she is sixteen. On the other hand, boys of ten and twelve years of age
are constantly married when their parents for any reason wish to see
the affair settled and a desirable connection presents itself, and the
yellow hats and pink and blue coats and attempted dignity of these boy
bridegrooms are among the sights of the cities.

A go-between is generally employed for the preliminary arrangements.
No money is given to the bride’s father by the bridegroom, nor does
the daughter receive a dowry, but she is supplied with a large
_trousseau_, which is packed in handsome marriage chests with brass
clamps and decorations. There is no betrothal ceremony, and after the
arrangement has been made the marriage may be delayed for weeks or
even months. When it is thought desirable that it should take place,
but not until the evening before, the bridegroom’s father sends a sort
of marriage-contract to the bride’s father, who receives it without
replying, and two pieces of silk are sent to the bride, out of which
her outer garments must be made for the marriage day.

A number of men carrying gay silk lanterns bear this present to the
bride, and on the way are met by a party of men from her father’s
house bearing torches, and a fight ensues, which is often more than a
make-believe one, for serious blows are exchanged, and on both sides
some are hurt. Death has occasionally been known to follow on the
wounds received. If the bridegroom’s party is worsted in the _melée_
it is a sign that he will have bad luck; if the bride’s, that she
will have misfortunes. The night before the marriage the parents of
the bride and groom sacrifice in their respective houses before the
ancestral tablets, and acquaint the ancestors with the event which is
to occur on the morrow.

The auspicious day having been decided on by the sorcerer, about an
hour before noon, the bridegroom on horseback, and in Court dress,
leaves his father’s house, and on that occasion only a plebeian can
pass a _yang-ban_ on the road without dismounting. Two men walk before
him, one carrying a white umbrella, and the other, who is dressed in
red cloth, a goose, which is the emblem of conjugal fidelity. He is
also attended by several men carrying unlighted red silk lanterns, by
various servants, by a married brother, if he has one, or by his father
if he has not. On reaching his destination he takes the goose from the
hands of the man in red, goes into the house, and lays it upon a table.
_Apropos_ of this emblem it must be observed that conjugal fidelity is
only required from the wife, and is a feminine virtue only.

Two women who are hired to officiate on such occasions lead the
bride on to the veranda, or an estrade, and place her opposite the
bridegroom, who stands facing her, but at some little distance from
her. The wedding guests fill the courtyard. This is the man’s first
view of his future wife. She may have seen him through a chink in the
lattice or a hole in the wall. A queer object she is to our thinking.
Her face is covered with white powder, patched with spots of red,
and her eyelids are glued together by an adhesive compound. At the
instigation of her attendants she bows twice to her lord, and he bows
four times to her. It is this public reciprocal “salutation” which
alone constitutes a valid marriage. After it, if he repudiates her, he
cannot take another wife. The permanence of the marriage tie is fully
recognized in Korea, though a man can form as many illicit connections
as he chooses. A cup of wine is then given to the bridegroom, who
drinks a little, after which it is handed to the bride, who merely
tastes it.

Afterwards within the house a table with a dainty dinner is set before
the husband, who eats sparingly. The bride retires to the women’s
rooms, and the groom rejoices with his friends in the men’s apartments.
There is no simultaneous banquet. Each guest on arriving is supplied
with a table of food. Such a table, in the case of people of means,
costs from five to six _yen_ (from 10s. to 12s.), and a very cheap
wedding costs seventy-five _yen_, so that several daughters are a
misfortune.

During the afternoon the husband returns to his father’s house, and
after a time the bride, bundled up in a mass of wedding clothes, and
with her eyelids still sealed, attended by the two women mentioned
before, some hired girls, and men with lanterns, goes thither also,
in a rigidly closed chair, in the gay decorations of which red
predominates. There she is received by her father and mother-in-law,
to whom she bows four times, remaining speechless. She is then carried
back to the house of her own parents, her eyelids are unsealed, and
the powder is washed from her face. At five her husband arrives, but
returns to his father’s house on the following morning, this process
of going and returning being repeated for three days, after which the
bride is carried in a plain chair to her future home, under the roof
of her parents-in-law, where she is allotted a room or rooms in the
seclusion of the women’s apartments.

The name bestowed on her by her parents soon after her birth is
dropped, and she is known thereafter only as “the wife of so and so,”
or “the mother of so and so.” Her husband addresses her by the word
_yabu_, signifying “Look here,” which is significant of her relations
to him.

Silence is regarded as a wife’s first duty. During the whole of the
marriage day the bride must be as mute as a statue. If she says a
word or even makes a sign she becomes an object of ridicule, and her
silence must remain unbroken even in her own room, though her husband
may attempt to break it by taunts, jeers, or coaxing, for the female
servants are all on the _qui vive_ for such a breach of etiquette as
speech, hanging about the doors and chinks to catch up and gossip even
a single utterance, which would cause her to lose caste for ever in her
circle. This custom of silence is observed with the greatest rigidity
in the higher classes. It may be a week or several months before the
husband knows the sound of his wife’s voice, and even after that
for a length of time she only opens her mouth for necessary speech.
With the father-in-law the law of silence is even more rigid. The
daughter-in-law often passes years without raising her eyes to his, or
addressing a word to him.

The wife has recognized duties to her husband, but he has few, if any,
to her. It is correct for a man to treat his wife with external marks
of respect, but he would be an object for scorn and ridicule if he
showed her affection or treated her as a companion. Among the upper
classes a bridegroom, after passing three or four days with his wife,
leaves her for a considerable time to show his indifference. To act
otherwise would be “bad form.” My impression is that the community
of interests and occupations which poverty gives, and the embargo
which it lays on other connections, in Korea as in some other Oriental
countries, produces happier marriages among the lower orders than
among the higher. Korean women have always borne the yoke. They accept
inferiority as their natural lot; they do not look for affection in
marriage, and probably the idea of breaking custom never occurs to
them. Usually they submit quietly to the rule of the _belle-mère_, and
those who are insubordinate and provoke scenes of anger and scandal
are reduced to order by a severe beating, when they are women of the
people. But in the noble class custom forbids a husband to strike
his wife, and as his only remedy is a divorce, and remarriage is
difficult, he usually resigns himself to his fate. But if, in addition
to tormenting him and destroying the peace of his house, the wife is
unfaithful, he can take her to a mandarin, who, after giving her a
severe beating, may bestow her on a satellite.

The seclusion of girls in the parental home is carried on after
marriage, and in the case of women of the upper and middle classes is
as complete as is possible. They never go out by daylight except in
completely closed chairs. At night, attended by a woman and a servant
with a lantern, and with a mantle over her head, a wife may stir
abroad and visit her female friends, but never without her husband’s
permission, who requires, or may require, proof that the visit has
been actually paid. Shopping is done by servants, or goods are
brought to the veranda, the vendors discreetly retiring. Time, which
among the leisured classes hangs heavily on the hands, is spent in
spasmodic cooking, sewing, embroidering, reading very light literature
in _En-mun_, and in the never-failing resources of gossip and the
interminable discussion of babies. If a wife is very dull indeed,
she can, with her husband’s permission, send for actors, or rather
posturing reciters, to the compound, and look at them through the
chinks of the bamboo blinds. Through these also many Korean ladies have
seen the splendors of the _Kur-dong_.

When the Korean wife becomes a mother her position is improved. Girls,
as being unable to support their parents in old age or to perform the
ancestral rites, are not prized as boys are, yet they are neither
superfluous nor unwelcome as in some Eastern countries. The birth of a
girl is not made an occasion for rejoicing, but that of the firstborn
son is, and after the name has been bestowed on him, the mother is
known as “the mother of so and so.” The first step alone of the first
boy is an occasion for family jubilation. Korean babies have no
cradles, and are put to sleep by being tapped lightly on the stomach.

[Illustration: A KOREAN LADY.]


FOOTNOTES:

[18] The notes on marriage customs which follow were given me by
English-speaking Koreans and were taken down at the time. They apply
chiefly to the middle class.




CHAPTER X

THE KOREAN PONY--KOREAN ROADS AND INNS


A gray and murky morning darkening into drizzle, which thickened into
a day’s pouring rain, was an inauspicious beginning of a long land
journey, but the crawling up the north Han had become monotonous and
change and action were desirable. Being an experienced muleteer, I
had arranged the loads for each pony so equitably as to obviate the
usual quarrel among the _mapu_ or grooms at starting! The men were not
regular _mapu_, and were going chiefly to see the Diamond Mountain. One
was well educated and gentlemanly, and the bystanders jeered at them
for “loading like scholars.” They were a family party, and there were
no disputes.

My first experience of the redoubtable Korean pony was not reassuring.
The men had never seen a foreign saddle and were half an hour in
getting it “fixed.” Though a pony’s saddle, it was far too large for
the creature’s minute body, the girths were half a yard and the crupper
nearly a foot too long. The animal bit, squealed, struck with his fore
and hind feet, and performed the singular feat of bending his back into
such an inward curve that his small body came quite near the ground.
The men were afraid of him, and it was only in the brief intervals
of fighting that they dared to make a dash at the buckles. It was
“tight-lacing” that he objected to.

The Korean pony is among the most salient features of Korea. The breed
is peculiar to it. The animals used for burdens are all stallions,
from 10 to 12 hands high, well formed, and singularly strong, carrying
from 160 to 200 lbs. 30 miles a day, week after week, on sorry food.
They are most desperate fighters, squealing and trumpeting on all
occasions, attacking every pony they meet on the road, never becoming
reconciled to each other even on a long journey, and in their fury
ignoring their loads, which are often smashed to pieces. Their savagery
makes it necessary to have a _mapu_ for every pony, instead of, as in
Persia, one to five. At the inn stables they are not only chained down
to the troughs by chains short enough to prevent them from raising
their heads, but are partially slung at night to the heavy beams of the
roof. Even under these restricted circumstances their cordial hatred
finds vent in hyena-like yells, abortive snaps, and attempts to swing
their hind legs round. They are never allowed to lie down, and very
rarely to drink water, and then only when freely salted. Their nostrils
are all slit in an attempt to improve upon Nature and give them better
wind. They are fed three times a day on brown slush as hot as they can
drink it, composed of beans, chopped millet stalks, rice husks, and
bran, with the water in which they have been boiled. The _mapu_ are
rough to them, but I never saw them either ill-used or petted. Dearly
as I love horses, I was not able on two journeys to make a friend of
mine. On this journey I rode a handsome chestnut, only 10 hands high.
He walked 4 miles an hour, and in a month of travelling, for much of
it over infamous mountain roads, never stumbled, but he resented every
attempt at friendliness both with teeth and heels. They are worth from
50s. upwards, and cost little to keep.

Their attendants, the _mapu_, who are by no means always their owners,
or even part owners, are very anxious about them and take very great
care of them, seeing to what passes as their comfort before their own.
The pack saddle is removed at once on halting, the animals are well
rubbed, and afterwards thick straw mats are bound round their bodies.
Great care is given to the cooking of their food. I know not whether
the partial slinging of them to the crossbeams is to relieve their legs
or to make fighting more difficult. On many a night I have been kept
awake by the screams of some fractious animal, kicking and biting his
neighbors as well as he was able, till there was a general plunging and
squealing, which lasted till blows and execrations restored some degree
of order.

After I mounted my steed, he trudged along very steadily, unless any of
his fellows came near him, when, with an evil glare in his eyes and a
hyena-like yell, he rushed upon them teeth and hoof, entirely oblivious
of bit and rider.

A torrent of rain fell, and the day’s journey consisted in splashing
through deep mud, fording swollen streams, because the bridges which
crossed them were rotten, getting wet to the skin, and getting
partially dry by sitting on the hot floor of a hovel called an inn
at the noonday halt, along with a steaming crowd of all sorts and
conditions of men in clean and dirty white clothes.

The road by which we travelled is the main one from Seoul to the
eastern treaty port of Wön-san. It passes through rice valleys with
abundant irrigation, and along the sides of bare hills. Goods and
travellers were not to be looked for in such weather, but there were
a few strings of coolies loaded with tobacco, and a few more taking
dried fish and dried seaweed, the latter a great article of diet, from
Wön-san to the capital. _Pangas_, or water pestles for hulling rice,
under rude thatched sheds, were numerous. These work automatically,
and their solemn thud has a tone of mystery. The machine consists of
a heavy log centred on a pivot, with a box at one end and a pestle at
the other. Water from a stream with some feet of fall is led into the
box, which when full tips over its contents and bears down one end of
the log, when the sudden rise, acting on the pestle at the other end,
brings it down with a heavy thud on the rice in the hollowed stone,
which serves as a mortar. Where this simple machine does not exist the
work is performed by women.

Denuded hillsides gave place to wooded valleys with torrents much
resembling parts of Japan, the rain fell in sheets, and quite in the
early afternoon, on reaching the hamlet of Sar-pang Kori, the _mapu_
declined to proceed farther, and there I had my first experience of a
Korean inn. Many weeks on that and subsequent journeys showed me that
this abominable shelter, as I then thought it, may be taken as a fair
average specimen, and many a hearty meal and good sound sleep may be
enjoyed under such apparently unpropitious circumstances.

There are regular and irregular inns in Korea. The irregular inn
differs in nothing from the ordinary hovel of the village roadway,
unless it can boast of a yard with troughs, and can provide
entertainment for beast as well as for man. The regular inn of the
towns and large villages consists chiefly of a filthy courtyard full
of holes and heaps, entered from the road by a tumble-down gateway. A
gaunt black pig or two tethered by the ears, big yellow dogs routing in
the garbage, and fowls, boys, bulls, ponies, _mapu_, hangers-on, and
travellers’ loads make up a busy scene.

On one or two sides are ramshackle sheds, with rude, hollowed trunks in
front, out of which the ponies suck the hot brown slush which sustains
their strength and pugnacity. On the other is the furnace-shed with the
oats where the slush is cooked, the same fire usually heating the flues
of the _kang_ floor of the common room, while smaller fires in the same
shed cook for the guests. Low lattice doors filled in with torn and
dirty paper give access to a room the mud floor of which is concealed
by reed mats, usually dilapidated, sprinkled with wooden blocks which
serve as pillows. Farming gear and hat boxes often find a place on the
low heavy crossbeams. Into this room are crowded _mapu_, travellers,
and servants, the low _residuum_ of Korean travel, for officials and
_yang-bans_ receive the hospitalities of the nearest magistracy, and
the peasants open their houses to anybody with whom they have a passing
acquaintance. There is in all inns of pretensions, however, another
room, known as “the clean room,” 8 feet by 6, which, if it existed, I
obtained, and if not I had a room in the women’s quarters at the back,
remarkable only for its heat and vermin, and the amount of _ang-paks_,
bundles of dirty clothes, beans rotting for soy, and other plenishings
which it contained, and which reduced its habitable portion to a
minimum. At night a ragged lantern in the yard and a glim of oil in the
room made groping for one’s effects possible.

The room was always overheated from the ponies’ fire. From 80° to 85°
was the usual temperature, but it was frequently over 92°, and I spent
one terrible night sitting at my door because it was 105° within. In
this furnace, which heats the floor and the spine comfortably, the
Korean wayfarer revels.

On arriving at an inn, the master or servant rushes at the mud, or
sometimes matted, floor with a whisk, raising a great dust, which he
sweeps into a corner. The disgusted traveller soon perceives that
the heap is animate as well as inanimate, and the groans, sighs,
scratchings, and restlessness from the public room show the extent of
the insect pest. But I never suffered from vermin in a Korean inn, nor
is it necessary. After the landlord had disturbed the dust, Wong put
down either two heavy sheets of oiled paper or a large sheet of cotton
dressed with boiled linseed oil on the floor, and on these arranged my
camp-bed, chair, and baggage. This arrangement (and I write from twenty
months’ experience in Korea and China) is a perfect preventative.

In most inns rice, eggs, vegetables, and a few Korean dainties, such
as soup, vermicelli, dried seaweed, and a paste made of flour, sugar,
and oil, can be procured, but tea never, and the position of the well,
which frequently receives the soakage of the courtyard, precludes a
careful traveller from drinking aught but boiled water. At the proper
seasons chickens can be purchased for about 4d. each, and pheasants
for less. Dog meat is for sale frequently in the spring, and pork
occasionally.

The charges at Korean inns are ridiculously low. Nothing is charged for
the room with its glim and hot floor, but as I took nothing for “the
good of the house,” I paid 100 _cash_ per night, and the same for my
room at the midday halt, which gave complete satisfaction. Travellers
who eat three meals a day spend, including the trifling gratuities,
from 200 to 300 _cash_ per diem. Millet takes the place of rice in the
northern inns.

The Korean inn is not noisy unless wine is flowing freely, and even
then the noise subsides early. The fighting of the ponies, and the
shouts and execrations with which the _mapu_ pacify them, are the chief
disturbances till daylight comes and the wayfarers move on. Travelling
after dark is contrary to Korean custom.

From this slight sketch, the shadows of which will bear frequent and
much intensifying, it will be seen that Korean travelling has a very
seamy side, that it is entirely unsuited to the “globe trotter,” and
that even the specialist may do well to count the cost before embarking
upon it.

To me the curse of the Korean inn is the ill-bred and unmanageable
curiosity of the people, specially of the women. A European woman had
not been seen on any part of the journey, and I suffered accordingly.
Sar-pang Kori may serve as a specimen.

My quarters were opposite to the ponies, on the other side of the foul
and crowded courtyard. There were two rooms, with a space under the
roof as large as either between them, on which the dripping baggage
was deposited, and Wong established himself with his cooking stove and
utensils, though there was nothing to cook except two eggs obtained
with difficulty, and a little rice left over from the boat stores. My
room had three paper doors. The unwalled space at once filled up with
a crowd of men, women, and children. All the paper was torn off the
doors, and a crowd of dirty Mongolian faces took its place. I hung up
cambric curtains, but long sticks were produced and my curtains were
poked into the middle of the room. The crowd broke in the doors, and
filled the small space not occupied by myself and my gear. The women
and children sat on my bed in heaps, examined my clothing, took out my
hairpins and pulled down my hair, took off my slippers, drew my sleeves
up to the elbow and pinched my arms to see if they were of the same
flesh and blood as their own; they investigated my few possessions
minutely, trying on my hat and gloves, and after being turned out by
Wong three times, returned in fuller force, accompanied by unmarried
youths, the only good-looking “girls” ever seen in Korea, with abundant
hair divided in the middle, and hanging in long plaits down their
backs. The pushing and crushing, the odious familiarity, the babel of
voices, and the odors of dirty clothing in a temperature of 80°, were
intolerable. Wong cleared the room a fourth time, and suggested that
when they forced their way in again, they should find me sitting on
the bed cleaning my revolver, a suggestion I accepted. He had hardly
retired when they broke in again, but there was an immediate stampede,
and for the remainder of the evening I was free from annoyance. Similar
displays of aggressive and intolerable curiosity occurred three times
daily, and it was hard to be always amiable under such circumstances.

The Koreans travel enormously, considering that they seldom make
pilgrimages. The pedlars, who solely supply the markets, are always
on the move, and thousands travel for other reasons, such as the
gatherings at ancestral tablets, restlessness, _ennui_, _ku-kyöng_ or
sightseeing, visits to tombs, place-hunting, literary examinations,
place-keeping and attempting to deprive others of place, litigation,
and business. The fear of tigers and dæmons prevents people from
journeying by night, which is as well, as the bearers of official
passports have the right to demand an escort of torchbearers from each
village. If necessity compels nocturnal travel, the wayfarers associate
themselves in bands, swinging lanterns, waving torches, yelling, and
beating gongs. The dread of the tiger is so universal as to warrant the
Chinese proverbial saying, “The Korean hunts the tiger one half of the
year, and the tiger hunts the Korean the other half.” As I have before
remarked, the mandarins and _yang-bans_, with their trains, quarter
themselves on the magistracies, and eat the fat of the land. Should
they be compelled to have recourse to the discomforts of an inn and
the food of a village, they appropriate the best of everything without
paying for it. Hence the visit of a foreigner armed with a _kwan-ja_ is
such an object of dread, that on this land journey I never let it be
known that I had one, and on my second journey discarded it altogether,
trusting in both to the reputation for scrupulous honesty which I at
once established with my men to overcome the repugnance which the
innkeepers felt to receiving me.

The roads along which the traveller rides or trudges, at a pace, in
either case, of 3 miles an hour, are simply infamous. There are few
made roads, and those which exist are deep in dust in summer and in mud
in winter, where they are not polished tracks over irregular surfaces
and ledges of rock. In most cases they are merely paths worn by the
passage of animals and men into some degree of legibility. Many of the
streams are unbridged, and most of the bridges, the roadways of which
are only of twigs and sod, are carried away by the rains of early
July, and are not restored till the middle of October. In some regions
traffic has to betake itself to fords or ferries when it reaches a
stream, with their necessary risks and detentions. Even on the “Six
Great Roads” which centre in the capital, the bridges are apt to be
in such a rotten condition that a _mapu_ usually goes over in advance
of his horses to ascertain if they will bear their weight. Among the
mountains, roads are frequently nothing else than boulder-strewn
torrent beds, and on the best, that between Seoul and Chemulpo, during
the winter, there are tracts on which the mud is from one to three
feet deep. These infamous bridle tracks, of which I have had extensive
experience, are one of the great hindrances to the development of Korea.

Among the worst of these is that part of the main road from Seoul to
Wön-san which we followed from Sar-pang Kori for two days to Sang-nang
Dang, where we branched off for the region known as Keum-Kang San,
or the Diamond Mountain. The earlier part of this route was through
wooded valleys, where lilies of the valley carpeted the ground, and
over the very pretty pass of Chyu-pha (1,300 feet), on the top of which
is a large spirit shrine, containing some coarsely painted pictures of
men who look like Chinese generals, the usual offerings of old shoes,
rags, and infinitesimal portions of rice, and a tablet inscribed, “I,
the spirit Söng-an-chi, dwell in this place.” There, as at the various
trees hung with rags, and the heaps of stones on the tops of passes,
the _mapu_ bowed and expectorated, as is customary at the abodes of
dæmons.

More than once we passed not far from houses outside of which the
_mu-tang_ or sorceress, with much feasting, beating of drums, and
clashing of cymbals, was exercising the dæmon which had caused the
sickness of some person within. Portions of the expensive feast
prepared on these occasions are offered to the evil spirit, and after
the exorcism part of the food so offered is given to the patient, in
the belief that it is a curative medicine, often seriously aggravating
the disease, as when a patient suffering from typhoid fever or
dysentery is stuffed with pork or _kimshi_! Recently a case came under
the notice of Dr. Jaisohn (_So Chai pil_) in Seoul, in which a man,
suffering from the latter malady, died immediately after eating raw
turnips, given him by the _mu-tang_ after being offered to the dæmons
at the usual feast at the ceremony of exorcism.

There is much wet rice along the route, as well as dry rice, with a
double line of beans between every two rows, and in the rice revel and
croak large frogs of extreme beauty, vivid green with black velvet
spots, the under side of the legs and bodies being cardinal red. These
appeared to be the prey of the graceful white and pink ibis, the latter
in the intensified flush of his spring coloring.

A descent from a second pass leads to the Keum-San Kang, a largish
river in a rich agricultural region, and to the village of Pan-pyöng,
where they were making in the rudest fashion the great cast-iron pots
used for boiling horse food, from iron obtained and smelted 33 _li_
farther north.

On two successive days there were tremendous thunderstorms, the
second succeeded, just as we were at the head of a wild glen, by a
brief tornado, which nearly blew over the ponies, and snapped trees
of some size as though they had been matchwood. Then came a profound
calm. The clouds lay banked in pink illuminated masses on a sky of
tender green, cleft by gray mountain peaks. Mountain torrents boomed,
crashed, sparkled, and foamed, the silent woods rejoiced the eye by
the vividness of their greenery and their masses of white and yellow
blossom, and sweet heavy odors enriched the evening air. On that and
several other occasions, I recognized that Korea has its own special
beauties, which fix themselves in the memory; but they must be sought
for in spring and autumn, and off the beaten track. Dirty and squalid
as the villages are, at a little distance their deep-eaved brown roofs,
massed among orchards, on gentle slopes, or on the banks of sparkling
streams, add color and life to the scenery, and men in their queer
white clothes and dress hats, with their firm tread, and bundled-up
women, with a shoggling walk and long staffs, brought round with a
semicircular swing at every step, are adjuncts which one would not
willingly dispense with.

Before reaching the Paik-yang Kang, a broad, full river, an affluent of
the northern Han, with singularly abrupt turns and perpendicular cliffs
of a formation resembling that of the Palisades on the Hudson River, we
crossed one of the great lava fields described by Consul Carles.[19]

This, which we crossed in a northeasterly direction, is a rough oval
about 40 miles by 30, a tableland, in fact, surrounded by a deep chasm
where the torrents which encircle it meet the mountains. Its plateaux
are from 60 to 100 feet above these streams, which are all affluents
of the Han, and are supported on palisades of basalt, exhibiting the
prismatic columnar formation in a very striking manner. In some places
the lava, which is often covered either with conglomerate or a stiffish
clay, is very near the surface, and large blocks of it lie along
the streams. It is a most fertile tract, and could support a large
population, but not being suited for rice, is very little cultivated,
and grows chiefly oats, millet, and beans, which are not affected by
the strong winds.

There are two Dolmens, not far from the Paik-yang Kang. In one the
upper stone is from 7 to 10 feet long, by 7 feet wide, and 17 inches
deep, resting on three stones 4 feet 2 inches high. The other is
somewhat smaller. The openings of both face due north.

After crossing the Paik-yang Kang, there 162 yards wide and 16 feet
deep, by a ferryboat of remarkably ingenious construction, rendered
necessary by the fact that the long bridge over the broad stream was
in ruins, and that the appropriation for its reconstruction had been
diverted by the local officials to their own enrichment, we entered
the spurs or ribs of the great mountain chain which, running north and
south, divides Korea into two very unequal longitudinal portions at the
village of Tong-ku.

The scenery became very varied and pretty. Forests clothed many of
the hills with a fair blossoming undergrowth untouched by the fuel
gatherers’ remorseless hook; torrents flashed in foam through dark,
dense leafage, or bubbled and gurgled out of sight; the little patches
of cultivation were boulder-strewn; there were few inhabitants, and the
tracks called roads were little better than the stony beds of streams.
As they became less and less obvious, and the valleys more solitary,
our tergiversations were more frequent and prolonged, the _mapu_ drove
the ponies as fast as they could walk, the fords were many and deep,
and two of the party were unhorsed in them, still we hurried on faster
and faster. Not a word was spoken, but I knew that the men had _tiger
on the brain_!

Blundering through the twilight, it was dark when we reached the lower
village of Ma-ri Kei, where we were to halt for the night, two miles
from the Pass of Tan-pa-Ryöng, which was to be crossed the next day.
There the villagers could not or would not take us in. They said they
had neither rice nor beans, which may have been true so late in the
spring. However, it is, or then was, Korean law that if a village could
not entertain travellers it must convoy them to the next halting-place.

The _mapu_ were frantic. They yelled and stormed and banged at the
hovels, and succeeded in turning out four sleepy peasants, who were
reinforced by four more a little farther on; but the torches were too
short, and after sputtering and flaring, went out one by one, and the
fresh ones lighted slowly. The _mapu_ lost their reason. They thrashed
the torchbearers with their heavy sticks; I lashed my _mapu_ with
my light whip for doing it; they yelled, they danced. Then things
improved. Gloriously glared the pine knots on the leaping crystal
torrents that we forded, reddening the white clothes of the men and
the stony track and the warm-tinted stems of the pines, and so with
shouts and yells and waving torches we passed up the wooded glen in the
frosty night air, under a firmament of stars, to the mountain hamlet of
upper Ma-ri Kei, consisting of five hovels, only three of which were
inhabited.

It is a very forlorn place and very poor, and it was an hour before my
party of eight human beings and four ponies were established in its
miserable shelter, though even that was welcome after being eleven
hours in the saddle.


FOOTNOTES:

[19] “Recent Journeys in Korea,” _Proceedings of the Royal Geographical
Society_, May, 1896.




CHAPTER XI

DIAMOND MOUNTAIN MONASTERIES


It was a glorious day for the Pass of Tan-pa-Ryöng (1,320 feet above
Ma-ri Kei), the western barrier of the Keum-Kang San region. Mr.
Campbell, of H.B.M.’s Consular Service, one of the few Europeans
who has crossed it, in his charming narrative mentions that it is
impassable for laden animals, and engaged porters for the ascent, but
though the track is nothing better than a torrent bed abounding in
great boulders, angular and shelving rocks, and slippery corrugations
of entangled tree roots, I rode over the worst part, and my ponies made
nothing of carrying the baggage up the rock-ladders. The mountain-side
is covered with luxuriant and odorous vegetation, specially oak,
chestnut, hawthorn, varieties of maple, pale pink azalea, and yellow
clematis, interspersed with a few distorted pines, primulas and lilies
of the valley covering the mossy ground.

From the spirit shrine on the summit a lovely panorama unfolds itself,
billows of hilly woodland, gleams of water, wavy outlines of hills,
backed by a jagged mountain wall, attaining an altitude of over 6,000
feet in the loftiest pinnacle of the Keum-Kang San. A fair land of
promise, truly! But this pass is a rubicon to him who seeks the Diamond
Mountain with the intention of immuring himself for life in one of its
many monasteries. For its name, Tan-pa, “crop-hair,” was bestowed on
it early in the history of Korean Buddhism for a reason which remains.
There those who have chosen the cloister emphasize their abandonment of
the world by cutting off the “topknot” of married dignity, or the heavy
braid of bachelorhood.

The eastern descent of the Tan-pa-Ryöng is by a series of zigzags,
through woods and a profusion of varied and magnificent ferns. A long
day followed of ascents and descents, deep fords of turbulent streams,
valley villages with terrace cultivation of buckwheat, and glimpses of
gray rock needles through pine and persimmon groves, and in the late
afternoon, after struggling through a rough ford in which the water was
halfway up the sides of the ponies, we entered a gorge and struck a
smooth, broad, well-made road, the work of the monks, which traverses a
fine forest of pines and firs above a booming torrent.

Towards evening “The hills swung open to the light”; through the
parting branches there were glimpses of granite walls and peaks
reddening into glory; red stems, glowing in the slant sunbeams, lighted
up the blue gloom of the coniferæ; there were glints of foam from the
loud-tongued torrent below; the dew fell heavily, laden with aromatic
odors of pines, and as the valley narrowed again and the blue shadows
fell the picture was as fair as one could hope to see. The monks,
though road-makers, are not bridge-builders, and there were difficult
fords to cross, through which the ponies were left to struggle by
themselves, the _mapu_ crossing on single logs. In the deep water I
discovered that its temperature was almost icy. The worst ford is at
the point where the first view of Chang-an Sa, the Temple of Eternal
Rest, the oldest of the Keum-Kang San monasteries, is obtained, a
great pile of temple buildings with deep curved roofs, in a glorious
situation, crowded upon a small grassy plateau in one of the narrowest
parts of the gorge, where the mountains fall back a little and afford
Buddhism a peaceful shelter, secluded from the outer world by snow for
four months of the year.

Crossing the torrent and passing under a lofty _Hang-Sal-Mun_, or
“red arrow gate,” significant in Korea of the patronage of royalty,
we were at once among the Chang-an Sa buildings, which consist of
temples large and small, a stage for religious dramas, bell and tablet
houses, stables for the ponies of wayfarers, cells, dormitories, and a
refectory for the abbot and monks, quarters for servants and neophytes,
huge kitchens, a large guest hall, and a nunnery. Besides these there
are quarters devoted to the lame, halt, blind, infirm, and solitary; to
widows, orphans, and the destitute.

These guests, numbering 100, seemed well treated. Between monks,
servants, and boys preparing for the priesthood there may be 100 more,
and 20 nuns of all ages, from girlhood up to eighty-seven years. This
large number of persons is supported by the rent and produce of Church
lands outside the mountains, the contributions of pilgrims and guests,
the moneys collected by the monks, who all go on mendicant expeditions,
even up to the gates of Seoul, which at that time it was death for any
priest to enter, and benefactions from the late Queen, which had become
increasingly liberal.

The first impression of the plateau was that it was a wood-yard on
a large scale. Great logs and piles of planks were heaped under the
stately pines and under a superb _Salisburia adiantifolia_, 17 feet
in girth; 40 carpenters were sawing, planing, and hammering, and 40
or 50 laborers were hauling in logs to the music of a wild chant, for
mendicant effort had been resorted to energetically, with the result
that the great temple was undergoing repairs, almost amounting to a
reconstruction.

Of the forty-five monasteries and monastic shrines which exist in
the Diamond Mountain, enhancing its picturesqueness and supplying it
with a religious and human interest, Chang-an Sa may be taken as a
fair specimen of the three largest, as it is undoubtedly the oldest,
assuming the correctness of a historical record quoted by Mr. Campbell,
which gives the date of its restoration by two monks, Yul-sa and
Chin-h’yo, as A.D. 515, in the reign of Pöp-heung, a king of Silla,
then the most important of the kingdoms, afterwards amalgamated as
Korea.

The large temple is a fine old building of the type adapted from
Chinese Buddhist architecture, oblong, with a heavy tiled roof 48 feet
in height, with wings, deep eaves protecting masses of richly-colored
wood-carving. The lofty reticulated roof is internally supported on
an arrangement of heavy beams, elaborately carved and painted in rich
colors. The panels of the doors, which serve as windows, and let in a
“dim religious light,” are bold fretwork, decorated in colors enriched
with gold.

The roofs of the actual shrines are supported on wooden pillars 3
feet in diameter, formed of single trees, and the panelled ceilings
are embellished with intricate designs in colors and gold. In one
Sakyamuni’s image, with a distinctly Hindu cast of countenance, and
a look of ineffable abstraction, sits under a highly decorative
reticulated wooden canopy, with an altar before it, on which are brass
incense burners, books of prayer, and lists of those deceased persons
for whose souls masses have been duly paid for. Much rich brocade,
soiled and dusty, and many gonfalons, hang round this shrine.

The “Hall of the Four Sages” contains three Buddhas in different
attitudes of abstraction or meditation, a picture, wonderfully worked
in gold and silks in Chinese embroidery, of Buddha and his disciples,
for which the monks claim an antiquity of fourteen centuries, and
sixteen Lohans, with their attendants. Along the side walls are a host
of dæmons and animals. Another striking shrine is that dedicated to
the Lord of the Buddhistic Hell and his ten princes. The monks call
it the “Temple of the Ten Judges.” This is a shrine of great resort,
and is much blackened by the smoke of incense and candles, but the
infernal torments depicted in the pictures at the back of each judge
are only too conspicuous. They are horrible beyond conception, and
show a diabolical genius in hellish art, akin to that which inspired
the creation of the groups in the Inferno of the temple of Kwan-yin at
Ting-hai on Chusan, familiar to some of my readers.

Besides the ecclesiastical buildings and the common guest-room, there
are Government buildings marked with the Korean national emblem, for
the use of officials who go up to Chang-an Sa for pleasure.

It was difficult for me to find accommodation, but eventually a
very pleasing young priest of high rank gave up his cell to me.
Unfortunately, it was next the guests’ kitchen, and the flues from the
fires passing under it, I was baked in a temperature of 91°, although,
in spite of warnings about tigers, the dangers from which are by no
means imaginary, I kept both door and window open all night. The cell
had for its furniture a shrine of Gautama and an image of Kwan-yin on
a shelf, and a few books, which I learned were Buddhist classics, not
volumes, as in a cell which I occupied later, full of pictures by no
means inculcating holiness. In the next room, equally hot, and without
a chink open for ventilation, thirty guests moaned and tossed all
night, a single candle dimly lighting a picture of Buddha and the dusty
and hideous ornaments on the altar below.

At 9 P.M., midnight, and again at 4 A.M., which is the hour at which
the monks rise, bells were rung, cymbals and gongs were beaten, and the
praises of Buddha were chanted in an unknown tongue. A feature at once
cheerful and cheerless is the presence at Chang-an Sa of a number of
bright, active, orphan boys from ten to thirteen years old, who are at
present servitors, but who will one day become priests.

It is an exercise of forbearance to abstain from writing much about the
beauties of Chang-an Sa as seen in two days of perfect heavenliness.
It is a calm retreat, that small, green, semicircular plateau which
the receding hills have left, walling in the back and sides with rocky
precipices half clothed with forest, while the bridgeless torrent in
front, raging and thundering among huge boulders of pink granite,
secludes it from all but the adventurous. Alike in the rose of sunrise,
in the red and gold of sunset, or gleaming steely blue in the prosaic
glare of midday, the great rock peak on the left bank, one of the
highest in the range, compels ceaseless admiration. The appearance of
its huge vertical topmost ribs has been well compared to that of the
“pipes of an organ,” this organ-pipe formation being common in the
range; seams and ledges halfway down give roothold to a few fantastic
conifers and azaleas, and lower still all suggestion of form is lost
among dense masses of magnificent forest.

As I proposed to take a somewhat different route from Yu-chöm Sa
(the first temple on the eastern slope) from that traversed by my
predecessors, the Hon. G. W. Curzon and Mr. Campbell, I left the ponies
and baggage at Chang-an Sa, the _mapu_, who were bent on _ku-kyöng_,
accompanying me for part of the distance, and took a five days’ journey
in the glorious Keum-Kang San in unrivalled weather, in air which was
elixir, crossing the range to Yu-chöm Sa by the An-mun-chai (Goose-Gate
Terrace), 4,215 feet in altitude, and recrossing it by the Ki-cho,
3,570 feet.

Taking two coolies to carry essentials, and a _na-myö_ or mountain
chair with two bearers, for the whole journey, all supplied by the
monks, I walked the first stage to the monasteries of P’yo-un Sa and
Chyang-yang Sa, the latter at an elevation of about 2,760 feet. From it
the view, which passes for the grandest in Korea, is obtained of the
“Twelve Thousand Peaks.” There is assuredly no single view that I have
seen in Japan or even in Western China which equals it for beauty and
grandeur. Across the grand gorge through which the Chang-an Sa torrent
thunders, and above primæval tiger-haunted forests with their infinity
of green, rises the central ridge of the Keum-Kang San, jagged all
along its summit, each yellow granite pinnacle being counted as a peak.

On that enchanting May evening, when odors of paradise, the fragrant
breath of a million flowering shrubs and trailers, of bursting buds,
and unfolding ferns, rose into the cool dewy air, and the silence
could be felt, I was not inclined to enter a protest against Korean
exaggeration on the ground that the number of peaks is probably
nearer 1,200 than 12,000. Their yellow granite pinnacles, weathered
into silver gray, rose up cold, stern, and steely blue from the
glorious forests which drape their lower heights--winter above and
summer below--then purpled into red as the sun sank, and gleamed above
the twilight, till each glowing summit died out as lamps which are
extinguished one by one, and the whole took on the ashy hue of death.

The situation of P’yo-un Sa is romantic, on the right bank of the
torrent, and is approached by a bridge, and by passing under several
roofed gateways. The monastery had been newly rebuilt, and is one mass
of fretwork, carving, gilding, and color, the whole decoration being
the work of the monks.

The front of the “Temple of the Believing Mind” is a magnificent
piece of bold wood-carving, the _motif_ being the peony. Every part
of the building which is not stone or tile is carved, and decorated
in blue, red, white, green, and gold. It may be barbaric, but it is
barbaric splendor. There too is a “Temple of Judgment,” with hideous
representations of the Buddhist hells, one scene being the opening of
the books in which the deeds of men’s mortal lives are written.

The fifty monks of P’yo-un Sa were very friendly, and not impecunious.
One gave up to me his oven-like cell, but repaid himself for the
sacrifice by indulging in ceaseless staring. The wind bells of the
establishment and the big bell have a melody in their tones such as
I have rarely heard, and when at 4 A.M. bells of all sizes and tones
announced that “prayer is better than sleep,” there was nothing about
the sounds to jar on the pure freshness of morning. The monks are well
dressed and jolly, and have a well-to-do air which clashes with any
pretensions to asceticism. The rule of these monasteries is a strict
vegetarianism which allows neither milk nor eggs, and in the whole
region there are neither fowls nor domestic animals. Not to wound the
prejudices of my hosts, I lived on tea, rice, honey water, edible
pine nuts, and a most satisfying combination of pine nuts and honey.
After a light breakfast on these delicacies, the sub-abbot, took me to
see his grandmother, a very bright pleasing woman of eighty, who came
from Seoul thirteen years ago and built a house within the monastery
grounds, in order to die in its quiet blessedness. There I had to eat
a second ethereal meal, and the hospitable hostess forced on me a pot
of exquisite honey and a bag of pine nuts. These, the product of the
_Pinus pinea_, which grows profusely throughout the range, furnish an
important and nutritious article of monkish diet, and are exported in
quantities as a luxury. They are rich and very oily, and turn rancid
soon after being shelled. The honey is also locally produced. The
beehives, which usually stand two together in cavities in the rocks,
are hollow logs with clay covers mounted on blocks of wood or stone.
Leaving this friendly hostess and the seven nuns of the nunnery behind,
the sub-abbot showed me the direction in which to climb, for road there
is none, and at parting presented me with a fan.

A visit to the Keum-Kang San elevates a Korean into the distinguished
position of a traveller, and many a young resident of Seoul gains this
fashionable reputation. It is not as containing shrines of pilgrimage,
for most Koreans despise Buddhism and its shaven mendicant priests,
that these mountains are famous in Korea, but for their picturesque
beauties, much celebrated in Korean poetry. The broad backbone of the
peninsula which has trended near to the east coast from Puk-chöng
southwards has degenerated into tameness, when suddenly Keum-Kang San,
or the Diamond Mountain, with its elongated mass of serrated, jagged,
and inaccessible peaks, and magnificent primæval forest, occupying an
area of about 32 miles in length by 22 in breadth, starts off from
it near the 39th parallel of latitude in the province of Kang-wön.
Buddhism, which, as in Japan, possesses itself of the fairest spots in
Nature, fixed itself in this romantic seclusion as early as the sixth
century A.D., and the venerable relics of the time when for 1,000
years it was the official as well as the popular cult of the country
are chiefly to be found in the recesses of this mountain region, where
the same faith, though now discredited, disestablished, and despised,
still attracts a certain number of votaries, and a far larger number
of visitors and so-called pilgrims, who resort to the shrines to
indulge in _ku-kyöng_, a Korean term which covers pleasure-seeking,
sightseeing, the indulgence of curiosity, and much else.

[Illustration: THE DIAMOND MOUNTAINS.]

So far as I have been able to learn, there are only two routes by
which the Keum-Kang San can be penetrated, the one which, after
following the bed of a singularly rough torrent, crosses the watershed
at An-mun-chai, and on or near which the principal monasteries and
shrines are situated, and the Ki-cho, a lower and less interesting
pass. Both routes start from Chang-an Sa. The forty-two shrines are the
headquarters of about 400 monks and about 50 nuns, who add to their
religious exercises the weaving of cotton and hempen cloth. The lay
servitors possibly number 1,000. The four great monasteries, two on the
eastern and two on the western slope, absorb more than 300 of the whole
number. All except the high monastic officials beg through the country,
alms-bowl in hand, the only distinctive features of their dress being
a very peculiar hat and the rosary. They chant the litanies of Buddha
from house to house, and there are few who deny them food and lodging
and a few _cash_ or a little rice.

The monasteries are presided over by what we should call “abbots,”
superiors of the first or second class according to the importance
of the establishment. These _Chong-söp_ and _Sön-tong_ are nominally
elected annually, but actually continue in office for years, unless
their conduct gives rise to dissatisfaction. Beyond the confirmation
of the election of the _Chong-söp_ of those monasteries which possess
a “Red Arrow Gate” by the Board of Rites at Seoul, the disestablished
Church appears to be quite free from State interference. In the case of
restoring and rebuilding shrines, large sums are collected in Seoul
and the southern provinces, though faith in Buddhism as a creed rarely
exists.

On making inquiries through Mr. Miller as to the way in which the
number of monks is kept up, I learned that the majority are either
orphans or children whose parents have given them to the monasteries
at a very early age owing to poverty. These are more or less educated
and trained by the monks. It must be supposed that among the number
there are a few who escape from the weariness and friction of secular
life into a region in which seclusion and devotion are possible. Of
this type was the pale and interesting young priest who gave up his
room to me at Chang-an Sa, and two who accompanied us to Yu-chöm
Sa, one of whom chanted _Na Mu Ami Tabu_ nearly the whole day as he
journeyed, telling a bead on his rosary for each ten repetitions. Mr.
Miller asked him what the words meant. “Just letters,” he replied;
“they have no meaning, but if you say them many times you will get to
heaven better.” Then he gave Mr. Miller the rosary, and taught him the
mystic syllables, saying, “Now, you keep the beads, say the words, and
you will go to heaven.” Among the younger priests several seemed in
earnest. Others make the monasteries (as is largely the case with the
celebrated shrines of Kwan-yin on the Chinese island of Pu-tu) a refuge
from justice or creditors, some remain desiring peaceful indolence, and
not a few are vowed and tonsured who came simply to view the scenery of
the Keum-Kang San and were too much enchanted to leave it.

As to the moribund Buddhism which has found its most secluded retreat
in these mountains, it is overlaid with dæmonolatry, and like that of
China is smothered under a host of semi-deified heroes. Of the lofty
aims and aspirations after righteousness which distinguish the great
reforming sects of Japan, such as the Monto, it knows nothing.

The monks are grossly ignorant and superstitious. They know nearly
nothing of the history and tenets of their own creed, or of the
purport of their liturgies, which to most of them are just “letters,”
the ceaseless repetition of which constitutes “merit.” Though some
of them know Chinese, and this knowledge means “education” in Korea,
worship consists in the mumbling or loud intoning of Sanscrit or
Tibetan phrases, of the meaning of which they have no conception. My
impression of most of the monks was that their religious performances
are absolutely without meaning to them, and that belief, except among
a few, does not exist. The Koreans universally attribute to them gross
profligacy, of the existence of which at one of the large monasteries
it was impossible not to become aware, but between their romantic and
venerable surroundings, the order and quietness of their lives, their
benevolence to the old and destitute, who find a peaceful asylum with
them, and in the main their courtesy and hospitality, I am compelled
to admit that they exercise a certain fascination, and that I prefer
to remember their virtues rather than their faults. My sympathies
go out to them for their appreciation of the beautiful, and for the
way in which religious art has assisted Nature by the exceeding
picturesqueness of the positions and decoration of their shrines.

The route from Chang-an Sa to Yu-chöm Sa, about 11 miles, is mainly
the rough beds of two great mountain torrents. Along this, in romantic
positions, are three large monasteries P’yo-un Sa, Ma-ha-ly-an Sa, and
Yu-chöm Sa, besides a number of smaller shrines, with from two to five
attendants each, one especially, Po-tok-am sa, dedicated to Kwan-yin,
picturesque beyond description--a fantastic temple built out from the
face of a cliff, at a height of 100 feet, and supported below the
centre by a pillar, round which a blossoming white clematis, and an
_Ampelopsis Veitchiana_, in the rose flush of its spring leafage, had
entwined their lavish growth.

No quadruped can travel this route farther than Chang-an Sa. Coolies,
very lightly laden, and chair-bearers carrying a _na-myö_, two long
poles with a slight seat in the middle, a noose of rope for the feet,
and light uprights bound together with a wistaria rope to support the
back, can be used, but the occupant of the chair has to walk much of
the way.

The torrent bed contracts above Chang-an Sa, opens out here and there,
and above P’yo-un Sa narrows into a gash, only opening out again at
the foot of the An-mun-chai. Surely the beauty of that 11 miles is not
much exceeded anywhere on earth. Colossal cliffs, upbearing mountains,
forests, and gray gleaming peaks, rifted to give roothold to pines and
maples, ofttimes contracting till the blue heaven above is narrowed to
a strip, boulders of pink granite 40 and 50 feet high, pines on their
crests and ferns and lilies in their crevices, round which the clear
waters swirl, before sliding down over smooth surfaces of pink granite
to rest awhile in deep pink pools where they take a more brilliant
than an emerald green with the flashing lustre of a diamond--rocks and
ledges over which the crystal stream dashes in drifts of foam, shelving
rock surfaces on which the decorative Chinese characters, the laborious
work of pilgrims, afford the only foothold, slides, steeper still, made
passable for determined climbers by holes, drilled by the monks, and
fitted with pegs and rails, rocks with bas-reliefs, or small shrines
of Buddha draped with flowering trailers, a cliff with a bas-relief of
Buddha, 45 feet high on a pedestal 30 feet broad, rocks carved into
lanterns and altars, whose harsh outlines are softened by mosses and
lichens, and above, huge timber and fantastic peaks rising into

  The summer heaven’s delicious blue.

A description can be only a catalogue. The actuality was intoxicating,
a canyon on the grandest scale, with every element of beauty present.

This route cannot be traversed in European shoes. In Korean string
foot-gear, however, I never slipped once. There was much jumping from
boulder to boulder, much winding round rocky projections, clinging to
their irregularities with scarcely foothold, and one’s back to the
torrent far below, and much leaping over deep crevices and “walking
tight-rope fashion” over rails. Wherever the traveller has to leave the
difficulties of the torrent bed he encounters those of slippery sloping
rocks, which he has to traverse by hanging on to tree trunks.

Our two priestly companions were most polite to me, giving me a hand
at the dangerous places, and beguiling the way by legends, chiefly
Buddhistic, concerning every fantastic and abnormal rock and pool, such
as the Myo-kil Sang, the colossal figure of Buddha referred to before,
a pothole in the granite bed of the stream, the wash-basin of some
mythical Bodhisattva, the Fire Dragon Pool, and the bathing-places of
dragons in the fantastic Man-pok-Tong (Grotto of Myriad Cascades), and
the Lion Stone which repelled the advance of the Japanese invaders in
1592.

Beyond the third monastery the gorge becomes wider and less fantastic,
the forest thinner, allowing scattered glimpses of the sky, and finally
some long zigzags take the traveller up to the open grassy summit of
the An-mun-chai, on which plums, pears, cherries, blush azaleas, and
pink rhododendrons, which had long ceased blooming below, were in
their first flush of beauty. To the west the difficult country of the
previous week’s journey, gray granite, deep valleys, and tiger-haunted
forest faded into a veil of blue, and in the east, over diminishing
forest-covered ranges, gleamed the blue Sea of Japan, more than 4,000
feet below.

On the eastern descent there are gigantic pines and firs, some of them
ruthlessly barked, and the long dependent streamers of the gray-green
_Lycopodium Sieboldii_ with which they are festooned, give the forest a
funereal aspect. Of this the peculiar fringed hats are made which are
worn on occasion by both monks and nuns. After many downward zigzags,
the track enters another rocky gorge with a fine torrent, in the bed
of which are huge “potholes,” shown as the bathing-places of dragons,
whose habits must have been much cleanlier than those of the present
inhabitants of the land.

The great monastery of Yu-chöm Sa, with its many curved roofs and
general look of newness and wealth, is approached by crossing a
very tolerable bridge. The road, which passes through a well-kept
burial-ground, where the ashes of the pious and learned abbots of
several centuries repose under more or less stately monuments, was much
encumbered near the monastery by great pine logs newly hewn for its
restoration, which was being carried out on a very expensive scale.

The monks made a difficulty about receiving us, and it was not till
after some delay, and the production of my _kwan-ja_, that we were
allotted rooms in the Government buildings for the two days of our
halt. After this small difficulty, they were unusually kind and
friendly, and one of the young priests, who came over the An-mun-chai
with us, offered Mr. Miller the use of his cell on Sunday, saying that
“it would be a quieter place than the great room to study his belief”!

I had hoped for rest and quiet on the following day, having had rather
a hard week, but these were unattainable. Besides 70 monks and 20
nuns, there were nearly 200 lay servitors and carpenters, and all were
bent upon _ku-kyöng_, the first European woman to visit the Keum-Kang
San being regarded as a great sight, and from early morning till late
at night there was no rest. The _kang_ floor of my room being heated
from the kitchen, it was too hot to exist with the paper front closed,
and the crowds of monks, nuns, and servitors, finishing with the
carpenters, who crowded in whenever it was opened, and hung there hour
after hour, nearly suffocated me, the day being very warm. The abbot
and several senior monks discussed with Mr. Miller the merits of rival
creeds, saying that the only difference between Buddhists and ourselves
is that they don’t kill even the smallest insect, while we disregard
what we call “animal life,” and that we don’t look upon monasticism and
other forms of asceticism as means of salvation. They admitted that
among their priests there are more who live in known sin than strivers
after righteousness.

[Illustration: TOMBSTONES OF ABBOTS, YU-CHÖM SA.]

There are many bright busy boys about Yu-chöm Sa, most of whom had
already had their heads shaved. To one who had not, Che-on-i gave a
piece of chicken, but he refused it because he was a Buddhist, on which
an objectionable-looking old sneak of a priest told him that it was all
right to eat it so long as no one saw him, but the boy persisted in his
refusal.

At midnight, being awakened by the boom of the great bell and the
disorderly and jarring clang of innumerable small ones, I went, at the
request of the friendly young priest, our fellow-traveller, to see him
perform the devotions, which are taken in turn by the monks.

The great bronze bell, an elaborate piece of casting of the fourteenth
century, stands in a rude, wooden, clay-floored tower by itself. A
dim paper lantern on a dusty rafter barely lighted up the white-robed
figure of the devotee, as he circled the bell, chanting in a most
musical voice a Sanscrit litany, of whose meaning he was ignorant,
striking the bosses of the bell with a knot of wood as he did so. Half
an hour passed thus. Then taking a heavy mallet, and passing to another
chant, he circled the bell with a greater and ever-increasing passion
of devotion, beating its bosses heavily and rhythmically, faster and
faster, louder and louder, ending by producing a burst of frenzied
sound, which left him for a moment exhausted. Then, seizing the
swinging beam, the three full tones which end the worship, and which
are produced by striking the bell on the rim, which is 8 inches thick,
and on the middle, which is very thin, made the tower and the ground
vibrate, and boomed up and down the valley with their unforgettable
music. Of that young monk’s sincerity, I have not one doubt.

He led us to the great temple, a vast “chamber of imagery,” where a
solitary monk chanted before an altar in the light from a solitary
lamp in an alabaster bowl, accompanying his chant by striking a small
bell with a deer horn. The dim light left cavernous depths of shadow
in the temple, from which eyes and teeth, weapons, and arms and legs
of otherwise invisible gods and devils showed uncannily. Behind the
altar is a rude and monstrous piece of wood-carving representing the
upturned roots of a tree, among which fifty-three idols are sitting
and standing. As well by daylight as in the dimness of midnight, there
are an uncouthness and power about this gigantic representation which
are very impressive. Below the carving are three frightful dragons,
on whose faces the artist has contrived to impress an expression of
torture and defeat.

The legend of the altar-piece runs thus. When fifty-three priests come
to Korea from India to introduce Buddhism, they reached this place, and
being weary, sat down by a well under a spreading tree. Presently three
dragons came up from the well and began a combat with the Buddhists,
in the course of which they called up a great wind which tore up the
tree. Not to be out-manœuvred, each priest placed an image of Buddha
on a root of the tree, turning it into an altar. Finally, the priests
overcome the dragons, forced them into the well, and piled great rocks
on the top of it to keep them there, founded the monastery, and built
this temple over the dragons’ grave. On either side of this unique
altar-piece is a bouquet of peonies 4 feet wide by 10 feet high.

The “private apartments” of this and the other monasteries consist of a
living room, and very small single cells, each with the shrine of its
occupant, and all very clean. It must be remembered, however, that this
easy, peaceful, luxurious life only lasts for a part of the year, and
that all but a few of the monks must make an annual tramp, wallet and
begging-bowl in hand, over rough, miry, or dusty Korean roads, put up
with vile and dirty accommodation, beg for their living from those who
scorn their tonsure and their creed, and receive “low talk” from the
lowest in the land.

Just before we left, the old abbot invited us into his very charming
suite of rooms, and with graceful hospitality prepared a repast for
us with his own hands--square cakes of rich oily pine nuts glued
together with honey, thin cakes of “popped” rice and honey, sweet
cake, Chinese sweetmeat, honey, and bowls of honey water with pine nuts
floating on its surface. The oil of these nuts certainly supplied the
place of animal food during my enforced abstinence from it, but rich
vegetable oil and honey soon pall on the palate, and the abbot was
concerned that we did not do justice to our entertainment. The general
culture produced by Buddhism at these monasteries, and the hospitality,
consideration, and gentleness of deportment, contrast very favorably
with the arrogance, superciliousness, insolence, and conceit which I
have seen elsewhere in Korea among the so-called followers of Confucius.

When we departed all the monks and laborers bade us a courteous
farewell, some of the older priests accompanying us for a short
distance.

After descending the slope by the well-made road which leads down
to the large monastery of Sin-kyei Sa, at the northeast foot of the
Keum-Kang San, we left it for a rough and difficult westerly track,
which, after affording some bright gleams of the Sea of Japan, enters
dense forest full of great boulders and magnificent specimens of the
_Filix mas_ and _Osmumda regalis_. A severe climb up and down an
irregular, broken staircase of rock took us over the Ki-cho Pass,
3,700 feet in altitude, after which there is a tedious march of some
hours along bare and unpicturesque mountain-sides before reaching the
well-made path which leads through pine woods to the beautiful plateau
of Chang-an Sa. The young priest had kept our baggage carefully, but
the heat of his floor had melted the candles in the boxes and had
turned candy into molasses, making havoc among photographic materials
at the same time!




CHAPTER XII

ALONG THE COAST


On leaving Chang-an Sa for Wön-san we retraced our route as far as
Kal-rön-gi, and afterwards crossed the Mak-pai Pass, from which there
is a grand view of the Keum-Kang San. Much of a somewhat tedious day
was spent in crossing a rolling elevated plateau bordered by high
denuded hills, on which the potatoe flourishes at a height of 2,500
feet. The soil is very fertile, but not being suited to rice, is very
little occupied. Crossing the Sai-kal-chai, 2,200 feet in altitude,
the infamous road descends on a beautiful alluvial valley, a rich
farming country, sprinkled with hamlets and surrounded by pretty hills
wooded with scrub oak, which in the spring is very largely used for
fertilizing rice fields. The branches are laid on the inundated surface
till the leaves rot off, and they are then removed for fuel. In this
innocent-looking valley the tiger scare was in full force. A tiger, the
people said, had carried off a woman the previous week, and a dog and
pig the previous night. It seemed incredible, yet there was a consensus
of evidence. Tigers are occasionally trapped in that region by baiting
a pit with a dog or pig, and the ensnared animal is destroyed by poison
or hunger to avoid injury to the skin, which, if it is that of a fine
animal, is very valuable.

A man is not the least ashamed of saying that he has not nerve or pluck
for tiger-hunting, which in Korea is a dangerous game, for the hunters
are stationed at the head of a gorge, usually behind brushwood, and
sometimes behind rocks, the big game, tigers and leopards, being driven
up towards them by large bodies of men. When one realizes that the
arms used are matchlocks lighted by slow matches from cords wound round
the arm, and that the charge consists of three imperfectly rounded
balls the size of a pea, and that, owing to the thickness of the screen
behind which the hunters are posted, the game is only sighted when
quite close upon them, one ceases to wonder at the reluctance of the
village peasants to turn out in pursuit of a man-eater, even though the
bones bring a very high price as Chinese medicine.

We put up at the only inn in the region. It had no “clean room,” but
the landlord’s wife gave up hers to me on condition that I would not
keep the door open for fear of a tiger. The temperature was 93°, and
to secure a little ventilation and yet keep my promise, I tore the
paper off the lattice-work of the door. Mr. Miller described his
circumstances thus. “I wanted to sleep in the yard, but the host would
not let me for fear of tigers, so I had to sleep in a room 8 feet by
10” (with a hot floor), “with seven other men, a cat, and a bird. By
tearing the paper off a window near my head I saved myself from death
by suffocation, and could have had a good night’s rest had not the
four horses been crowded into two stalls in the kitchen. They found
their quarters so close that they squealed, kicked, bit, and fought
all night, and their drivers helped them to make night hideous by
their yelling.” Nobody slept, and I had my full share of the unrest
and disturbance, a bad preparation for an eleven hours’ ride on the
next day, which was fiercely hot, as were the remaining six days of the
journey.

The road from this lofty tiger-haunted valley to the sea level at
Chyung-Tai is for the most part through valleys very sparsely peopled.
Much forest land, however, was being cleared for the planting of
cotton, and the peasant farmers are energetic enough to carry their
cultivation to a height of 2,000 feet. [On nearly the whole of this
journey I estimated that the land is capable of supporting double its
present population.] At Hoa-chung, a prettily situated market-place,
a student who had successfully passed the literary examination at
the Kwagga in Seoul, surrounded by a crowd in bright colored festive
clothing, was celebrating his return by sacrificing at his father’s
grave. On the various roads there were many processions escorting
village students home from the great competition in the Royal presence
at the capital, the student in colored clothes, on a gaily-caparisoned
horse or ass, with music and flags in front of him, and friends, gaily
dressed, walking beside him. On approaching his village he was met
with flags and music, the headman and villagers, even the women in gay
apparel, going out to welcome him. After this success he was entitled
to erect a tall pole, with a painted dragon upon it, in front of his
house. Success was, however, very costly, and often hung the millstone
of debt round a man’s neck for the remainder of his life. After
“passing” the student became eligible for official position, the sole
object of ambition to an “educated” Korean.

At Hoa-chung we turned eastwards, and took the main road to the coast,
attaining an altitude (uncorrected) of 3,117 feet by continued ascents
over rounded hills, which, when not absolutely bare except for coarse,
unlovely grasses, only produced stunted hazel bush. After this an easy
ascent among absolutely denuded hills leads up to a spirit shrine of
more than usual importance, crowded with the customary worthless _ex
votos_, rags and old straw shoes. At that point the road makes an
altogether unexpected and surprising plunge over the bare shoulders of
a bare hill into Paradise!

This pass of the “Ninety-nine Turns,” Tchyu-Chi-chang, deserves its
name, the number of sharp zigzags not being exaggerated, as in the
case of the “Twelve Thousand Peaks.” It is so absolutely rocky, and
so difficult in consequence, that it is more passable in snow than in
summer. Its abrupt turns lead down a forest-clothed mountain ridge
into a magnificent gorge, densely wooded with oak, Spanish chestnut,
weeping lime, _Abies excelsa_, and magnolia, looped together with the
white _mille-fleur_ rose. On the northern side rises Hoang-chyöng San,
a noble mountain and conspicuous landmark, much broken up into needles
and precipices, and clothed nearly to its summit with forests, of which
the _Pinus sylvestris_ is the monarch. The descent of the pass takes
one hour and a half, the road coming down upon a torrent 50 feet wide,
only visible in glints of foam here and there, amid its smothering
overgrowth of blossoming magnolia, syringa, and roses.

The filthy, miserable hamlet of Chyung-Tai, composed of five hovels,
all inns, was rather a comfortless close to a fatiguing day. These
houses are roofed, as in some other villages, with thick slabs of wood
heaped on each other, kept on, so far as they are kept on, by big
stones. The forest above on the mountains is a Royal reservation, made
so by the first king of this dynasty, who built stone walls round the
larger trees.

I had occasion to notice at Chyung-Tai, and in many other places, the
extreme voracity of the Koreans. They eat not to satisfy hunger, but
to enjoy the sensation of repletion. The training for this enjoyment
begins at a very early age, as I had several opportunities of
observing. A mother feeds her young child with rice, and when it can
eat no more in an upright position, lays it on its back on her lap and
feeds it again, tapping its stomach from time to time with a flat spoon
to ascertain if further cramming is possible. “The child is father to
the man,” and the adult Korean shows that he has reached the desirable
stage of repletion by eructations, splutterings, slapping his stomach,
and groans of satisfaction, looking round with a satisfied air. A
quart of rice, which when cooked is of great bulk, is a laborer’s
meal, but besides there are other dishes, which render its insipidity
palatable. Among them are pounded capsicum, soy, various native sauces
of abominable odors, _kimshi_, a species of sour kraut, seaweed, salt
fish, and salted seaweed fried in batter. The very poor only take two
meals a day, but those who can afford it take three and four.

In this respect of voracity all classes are alike. The great merit of a
meal is not so much quality as quantity, and from infancy onwards one
object in life is to give the stomach as much capacity and elasticity
as is possible, so that four pounds of rice daily may not incommode it.
People in easy circumstances drink wine and eat great quantities of
fruit, nuts, and confectionery in the intervals between meals, yet are
as ready to tackle the next food as though they had been starving for a
week. In well-to-do houses beef and dog are served on large trenchers,
and as each guest has his separate table, a host can show generosity
to this or that special friend without helping others to more than is
necessary. I have seen Koreans eat more than three pounds of solid meat
at one meal. Large as a “portion” is, it is not unusual to see a Korean
eat three and even four, and where people abstain from these excesses
it may generally be assumed that they are too poor to indulge in them.
It is quite common to see from twenty to twenty-five peaches or small
melons disappear at a single sitting, and without being peeled. There
can be no doubt that the enormous consumption of red pepper, which is
supplied even to infants, helps this gluttonous style of eating. It is
not surprising that dyspepsia and kindred evils are very common among
Koreans.

The Korean is omnivorous. Dog meat is in great request at certain
seasons, and dogs are extensively bred for the table. Pork, beef,
fish, raw, dried, and salted, the intestines of animals, all birds and
game, no part being rejected, are eaten--a baked fowl, with its head,
claws, and interior intact, being the equivalent of “the fatted calf.”
Cooking is not always essential. On the Han I saw men taking fish off
the hook, and after plunging them into a pot of red pepper sauce,
eating them at once with their bones. Wheat, barley, maize, millet, the
Irish and sweet potato, oats, peas, beans, rice, radishes, turnips,
herbs, and wild leaves and roots innumerable, seaweed, shrimps, pastry
made of flour, sugar, and oil, _kimshi_, on the making of which the
whole female population of the middle and lower classes is engaged in
November, a homemade vermicelli of buckwheat flour and white of egg,
largely made up into a broth, soups, dried persimmons, sponge-cakes,
cakes of the edible pine nut and honey, of flour, sugar, and sesamum
seeds, onions, garlic, lily bulbs, chestnuts, and very much else are
eaten. Oil of sesamum is largely used in cooking, as well as vinegar,
soy, and other sauces of pungent and objectionable odors, the basis of
most of them being capsicums and fermented rotten beans!

The magistracy of Thong-chhön, where we halted the next day at noon,
and where the curiosity of the people was absolutely _suffocating_,
is a town sheltered from the sea, which is within 2 miles, by a high
ridge, and is situated prettily in a double fold of hills remarkable
for the artistic natural grouping of very grand pines.

At this point a spell of the most severe heat of the year set in, and
the remainder of the journey was accomplished in a temperature ranging
from 89° to 100° in the shade, and seldom falling below 80° at night,
phenomenal heat for the first days of June. Taking advantage of it, the
whole male population was in the fields rice planting. Rice valleys,
reaching the unusual magnitude for Korea of from 3 to 7 miles in
breadth, and from 6 to 14 miles in length, sloping gently to the sea,
with innumerable villages on the slopes of the hills which surround
them, were numerous. Among them I saw, for the only time, reservoirs
for the storage of water for irrigation. The pink ibis and the spotted
green frog were abundant everywhere. The country there has a look of
passable prosperity, but the people are kept at a low level by official
exactions.

On this coast of Kong-wön-Do are the P’al-kyöng or “Eight Views,” which
are of much repute in Korea. We passed two of them. Su-chung Dai (The
Place Between the Waters) is a narrow strip of elevated white sand with
the long roll of the Pacific on the east, and the gentle plash of a
lovely fresh-water lake on the west. This lake of Ma-cha Töng, the only
body of fresh water which I saw in Korea, about 6 miles in length by 2
in breadth, has mountainous shores much broken by bays and inlets, at
the head of each of which is a village half hidden among trees in the
folds of the hills, while wooded conical islets break the mirror of the
surface. On the white barrier of sand there are some fine specimens
of the red-stemmed _Pinus sylvestris_, with a carpet of dwarf crimson
roses and pink lilies. Among the mountain forests are leopards, tigers,
and deer, and the call of the pheasant and the cooing of the wild dove
floated sweetly from the lake shore. It was an idyll of peace and
beauty. The other of the “Eight Views” is rather a curiosity than a
beauty, miles of cream-colored sand blown up in wavy billows as high as
the plumy tops of thousands of fir trees which are helplessly embedded
in it.

During the long hot ride of eleven hours, visions of the evening halt
at a peaceful village on the seashore filled my mind, and hope made the
toilsome climb over several promontories of black basalt tolerable,
even though the descents were so steep that the _mapu_ held the ponies
up by their tails! In the early twilight, when the fierce sun blaze was
over, in the smoky redness of a heated evening atmosphere, when every
rock was giving forth the heat it had absorbed in the day, across the
stream which is at once the outlet of the lake and the boundary between
the provinces of Kang-wön and Ham-gyöng, appeared a large, straggling,
gray-roofed village, above high-water mark, on a beach of white sand.
Several fishing junks were lying in shelter at the mouth of the stream.
Women were beating clothes and drawing water, and children and dogs
were rolling over each other on the sand, all more or less idealized by
being silhouetted in purple against the hot, lurid sky.

As the enchantment of distance faded and Ma-cha Töng revealed itself
in plain prose, fading from purple into sober gray, the ideal of a
romantic halt by the pure sea vanished. A long, crooked, tumble-down
narrow street, with narrower off-shoots, heaps of fish offal and
rubbish, in which swine, mangy, blear-eyed dogs, and children, much
afflicted with skin disease, were indiscriminately routing and rolling,
pools covered with a thick brown scum, a stream which had degenerated
into an open sewer, down which thick green slime flowed tardily,
a beach of white sand, the upper part of which was blackened with
fish laid out to dry, frames for drying fish everywhere, men, women,
children, all as dirty in person and clothing as it was possible to be,
thronging the roadway as we approached, air laden with insupportable
odors, and the vilest accommodation I ever had in Korea, have fixed
this night in my memory.

The inn, if inn it was, gave me a room 8 feet by 6, and 5 feet 2 inches
high. _Ang-paks_, for it was the family granary, iron shoes of ploughs
and spades, bundles of foul rags, seaweed, ears of millet hanging in
bunches from the roof, pack saddles, and worse than all else, rotten
beans fermenting for soy, and malodorous half-salted fish, just left
room for my camp-bed. This den opened on a vile yard, partly dunghill
and partly pigpen, in which is the well from which the women of the
house, with sublime _sang-froid_, draw the drinking water! Outside is a
swamp, which throughout the night gave off sickening odors. Every few
minutes something was wanted from my room, and as there was not room
for two, I had every time to go out into the yard. Wong’s good-night
was, “I hope you won’t die.” When I entered, the mercury was 87°. After
that, cooking for man and beast and the _kang_ floor raised it to 107°,
at which point it stood till morning, vivifying into revoltingly active
life myriads of cockroaches and vermin which revel in heat, not to
speak of rats, which ran over my bed, ate my candle, gnawed my straps,
and would have left me without boots, had I not long before learned to
hang them from the tripod of my camera. From nine years of travelling,
some of it very severe and comfortless, that night stands out as
hideously memorable.

The _raison d’être_ of Ma-cha Töng, and the numerous coast villages
which exist wherever a convenient shore and a protection for boats
occur together, is the coast fishing. The fact that a floating
population of over 8,000 Japanese fishermen make a living by fishing
on the coast near Fusan shows that there is a redundant harvest to be
reaped. The Korean fisherman is credited with utter want of enterprise,
and Mr. Oiesen, in the Customs’ report for Wön-san for 1891, accuses
him of “remaining content with such fish as will run into crudely
and easily constructed traps, set out along the shore, which only
require attention for an hour or so each day.” I must, however, say
that each village that I passed possessed from seven to twelve fishing
junks, which were kept at sea. They are unseaworthy boats, and it is
not surprising that they hug the shore. I believe that the fishing
industry, with every other, is paralyzed by the complete insecurity of
the earnings of labor and by the exactions of officials, and that the
Korean fisherman does not care to earn money of which he will surely be
deprived on any or no pretence, and that, along with the members of the
industrial classes generally, he seeks the protection of poverty.

The fish taken on this coast, when salted and dried, find their way
by boat to Wön-san, and from thence over central Korea, but in winter
pedlars carry them directly inland from the fishing villages. Salterns
on the plan of those often seen in China occur frequently near the
villages. The operation of making salt from sea water is absolutely
primitive, and so rough and dirty that the whiteness of the coarse
product which results is an astonishment. In spite of heavy losses and
heavier “squeezings,” this industry, which is carried on from May to
October, is a profitable one.

The road beyond that noisome halting-place traverses picturesque
country for many miles, being cut out of the sides of noble cliffs,
or crosses basaltic spurs by arrangements resembling rock ladders,
keeping perforce always close to the sea, now on dizzy precipices,
then descending to firm hard stretches of golden sand, or winding just
above high-water mark among colossal boulders which are completely
covered with the _Ampelopsis Veitchiana_, the creeper _par excellence_
of Korea. The sea was green and violet near the shore and a vivid blue
in the distance, and on its rippleless surface fishing boats with gray
hulls and brown sails lay motionless, for the rush and swirl of tides,
rising and falling as they do on the west coast from 25 to 38 feet, are
unknown on the east coast, the variation between high and low water
being within 18 inches.

It was the hottest day of the year, and it was fortunate that the
prettily situated market-place of Syo-im had a new and clean inn, in
which it was possible to prolong the noonday halt, and to get a good
dinner of fresh and salt fish, vegetables, herbs, sauces, and rice, for
the sum of two cents gold. There also, being the market-day, Mr. Miller
succeeded in obtaining _cash_ for four silver _yen_ from the pedlars.

After passing over a tedious sandy plain with a reserve of fine firs,
under which the countless dead of ages lie under great sand mounds held
together by nets or branches of trees, we reached at sunset my ideal,
a clean, exquisitely situated village of nine houses, of which one was
an inn where, contrary to the general rule, we were made cordially
welcome.[20] The nine families at Chin-pul possessed seven good-sized
fishing boats.

That inn is of unusual construction. There is a broad mud platform of
which fireplaces and utensils for cooking for man and beast occupy one
half, and the other is matted for sleeping and eating. My room, which
had no window, but was clean and plastered, opened on this, and as
the mercury was at 111° until 3 A.M. owing to the heated floor, I sat
at the door nearly all night, so the dawn and an early start, and the
coolness of the green and violet shades of the almost rippleless ocean,
which laved its varied shore of bays, promontories, and lofty cliffs,
were very welcome.

A valley opening on the sea which it took five hours to skirt and
cross, covered with grain and newly planted rice, is literally fringed
with villages, which look comfortably prosperous in spite of exactions.
A smaller valley contains about 3,000 acres of rice land only, and
on the slopes surrounding all these are rich lands, bearing heavy
crops of wheat, millet, barley, cotton, tobacco, castor oil, sesamum,
oats, turnips, peas, beans, and potatoes. The ponies are larger and
better kept in that region, and the red bulls are of immense size.
The black pig, however, is as small and mean as ever. The crops were
clean, and the rice dykes and irrigation channels well kept. Good and
honest government would create as happy and prosperous a people as the
traveller finds in Japan, the soil being very similar, while Korea has
a far better climate.

During the land journey from Chang-an Sa to Wön-san I had better
opportunities of seeing the agricultural methods of the Koreans than
in the valleys of the Han. As compared with the exquisite neatness
of the Japanese and the diligent thriftiness of the Chinese, Korean
agriculture is to some extent wasteful and untidy. Weeds are not kept
down in the summer as they ought to be, stones are often left on the
ground, and there is a raggedness about the margins of fields and dykes
and a dilapidation about stone walls which is unpleasing to the eye.
The paths through the fields are apt to be much worn and fringed with
weeds, and the furrows are not so straight as they might be. Yet on the
whole the cultivation is much better and the majority of the crops far
cleaner than I had been led to expect. Domestic animals are very few,
and very little fertilizing material is applied to the ground except
in the neighborhood of Seoul and other cities, a fact which makes its
exceeding fertility very noteworthy.

The rainfall is abundant but not excessive, and the desolating floods
which afflict Korea’s opposite neighbor, Japan, are as unknown as
earthquakes. Irrigation is only necessary for rice, which is the staple
of Korea. Except on certain rice lands, two crops a year are raised
throughout central and southern Korea, the rice being planted in June,
or rather transplanted from the nurseries in which it is sown in May,
and is harvested early in October, when the ground is ploughed and
barley or rye is sown, which ripens in May or early June of the next
year, after which water is let in, the field is again ploughed while
flooded, and the rice plants are set out in rows of “clumps,” two or
four or even six plants in a “clump.” Where only one crop is raised,
the rice field lies fallow from the end of October till the following
May. In wheat, barley, or rye fields the sowing is in October, and the
harvest in May or June, after which beans, peas, and other vegetables
are sown. Along the “great roads,” as the crops approach ripeness,
elevated watch-sheds are erected in the fields as safeguards against
depredations. The crops, on the whole, are very fine, and would be
immense were it not for the paucity of fertilizing material.

Agricultural implements are rude and few. A wooden ploughshare with a
removable iron shoe is used which turns the furrows the reverse way to
ours. A wooden spade, also shod with iron, is largely used for heavy
work. This, which excites the ridicule of foreigners as a gratuitous
waste of man power, is furnished with several ropes attached to the
blade, each of which is jerked by a man while another man guides the
blade into the ground by its long handle. The other implements are the
same sort of sharp-pointed sharp hoe which is in use in China, and
which in the hands of the eastern peasant fills the place of shovel,
hoe, and spade, a reaping hook, a short knife, a barrow, and a bamboo
rake which is largely used in the denudation of the hills.

Grain, peas, and beans are threshed out with flails as often as not in
the roadway of a village, while the grinding of flour and the hulling
of rice are accomplished by the stone quern, and the stone or wooden
mortar, with an iron pestle worked by hand or foot, the “_pang-a_,” or,
as has been previously described, by a “_mul_,” or water “_pang-a_.”
Rice is threshed by beating the ears over a board, and all grain is
winnowed by being thrown up in the wind.

The pony is not used in agriculture. Ploughing is done by the powerful,
noble, tractable, Korean bull, a cane ring placed in his nostrils
when young rendering him manageable even by a young child. He is four
years in attaining maturity, and is now worth from £3 to £4, his value
having been enhanced by the late war and the prevalence of rinderpest
in recent years. Milk is not an article of diet. In some districts
ox-sleds of very simple construction are used for bringing down fuel
from the hills and produce from the fields, and at Seoul and a few
other cities rude carts are to be seen; but ponies, men, and bulls are
the means of transport for produce and goods, the loads being adjusted
evenly on wooden pack saddles, or in the case of small articles in
panniers of plaited straw or netted rope. In the latter, ingeniously
made to open at the bottom and discharge their contents, manure is
carried to the fields. Both bulls and ponies are shod with iron. The
pony carries from 160 to 200 lbs. Sore backs are lamentably common.

The breed of pigs is very small. Pigs are always black and loathsome.
Their bristles stand up along their backs, and they are lean, active,
and of specially revolting habits. The dogs are big, usually buff,
long-haired, and cowardly, and caricature the Scotch collie in their
aspect. The fowls are plebeian, and for wildness, activity, and powers
of flight are unequalled in my experience. Ducks are not very common,
and geese are kept chiefly as guards, and for presentation at weddings
as emblems of fidelity. The few sheep bred in Korea are reserved for
Royal sacrifices. I have occasionally seen mutton on tables in Seoul,
but it has been imported from Chefoo. The villages which make their
living altogether by agriculture are usually off the high roads, those
which the hasty traveller passes through depending as much on the
entertaining of wayfarers as on the cultivation of the land. In these,
nearly every house has a covered shelf in front at which food can be
obtained, but lodging is not provided, and the villages which can
feed and lodge beasts as well as men are few. The fact that the large
farming villages are off the road gives an incorrect notion of the
population of Korea.

On the slope of a hillside above a pleasant valley lies the town of
An-byöng, once, judging from the extent of its decaying walls and
fortifications, and the height of its canopied but ruinous gate towers,
a large city. The _yamen_ and other Government buildings are well kept,
and being in good repair, are in striking contrast to those previously
seen on the route. The “main street” is, however, nothing but a dirty
alley. The town has a diminishing population, and though it makes some
paper from the _Brousonettia Papyrifera_, and has several schools,
and exchanges rice and beans for foreign cottons at Wön-san, it has a
singularly decaying look, and is altogether unworthy of its position as
being one of the chief places in the province of Ham-gyöng. Outside of
it the road crosses a remarkably broad river bed by a bridge 720 feet
long, so dilapidated that the ponies put their feet through its rotten
sods several times.

From An-byöng to Ta-ri-mak, a short distance from Nam-San on the
main road from Seoul to Wön-san, is a long and tedious ride through
thinly peopled country and pine woods full of graves. We spent two
nights there at a very noisy and disagreeable inn, in which privacy
was unattainable and the vermin were appalling. There the host was
specially unwilling to take in foreigners, on the ground that we
should not pay, a suspicion which irritated our friendly _mapu_,
who vociferated at the top of their voices that we paid “even for
the smallest things we got.” The swinging season was at hand, each
amusement having its definite date for beginning and ending, and in
every village swings were being erected on tall straight poles. Wong
could never resist the temptation of taking a swing, which always
amused the people.

At this inn there were some musical performers who made both night and
day wearisome to me, but gave great pleasure to others. I have not
previously mentioned my sufferings on the Han from the sounds produced
by itinerant musicians, and by the _mu-tang_ or sorceress and her
coadjutors; but, as has been forcibly brought out in a paper on Korean
music by Mr. Hulbert in the _Korean Repository_,[21] the sounds are
peculiar and unpleasing, because we neither know nor feel what they
are intended to express, and we bring to Korean music not the Korean
temperament and training but the Western, which demands “time” as an
essential. It may be added that the Koreans, like their neighbors the
Japanese, love our music as little as we love theirs, and for the same
reason, that the ideas we express by it are unfamiliar to them.

One reason of the afflictive and discordant sounds is that the gamut
of Korea differs from the musical scale of European countries, with
the result that whenever music seems to be trembling on the verge
of a harmony, a discord assails the ear. The musical instruments
are many, but they are not carefully finished. Among instruments of
percussion are drums, cymbals, gongs, and a species of castanet.
For wind instruments there are unkeyed bugles, flutes, and long and
short trumpets; and the stringed instruments are a large guitar, a
twenty-five stringed guitar, a mandolin, and a five-stringed violin.
The discord produced by a concert of several of these instruments is
heard in perfection at the opening and closing of the gates of cities.

There are three classes of Korean vocal music, the first being the
_Si-jo_ or “classical” style, _andante tremuloso_, and “punctuated with
drums,” the drum accompaniment consisting mainly of a drum beat from
time to time as an indication to the vocalist that she has quavered
long enough upon one note. The _Si-jo_ is a slow process, and is said
by the Koreans to require such long and patient practise that only the
dancing girls can excel in it, as they alone have leisure to cultivate
it. One branch of it deals with convivial songs, of one of which I
give a translation from the gifted pen of the Rev. H. B. Hulbert of
Seoul.[22]

The Korean, prisoned during the winter in his small, dark, dirty, and
malodorous rooms, with neither a glowing fireside nor brilliant lamp
to mitigate the gloom, welcomes spring with lively excitement, and
demands music and song as its natural accompaniment--song that shall
express the emancipation, breathing space, and unalloyed physical
pleasure which have no counterpart in our English feelings. Thus a
classical song runs:--

  The willow catkin bears the vernal blush of summer’s dawn
                When winter’s night is done;
  The oriole, who preens herself aloft on swaying bough,
                Is summer’s harbinger;
  The butterfly, with noiseless _ful-ful_ of her pulsing wing,
                Marks off the summer hour.
  Quick, boy, thy zither! Do its strings accord? ’Tis well.
                Strike up! _I must have song._

The second style of Korean vocal music is the _Ha Ch’i_ or popular. The
most conspicuous song in this class is the _A-ra-rüng_, of 782 verses.
It is said that the _A-ra-rüng_ holds to the Korean in music the same
place that rice does in his food--all else being a mere appendage. The
tune, but with the trills and quavers, of which there are one or two to
each note, left out, is given here, though Mr. Hulbert, to whom I am
greatly indebted, calls it “a very weak attempt to score it.”

[Illustration: A-ra-rüng a-ra-rüng a-ra-ri-o--- a-ra-rüng

öl--sa pai ddi-ö-ra. Mun-gyung sai-chai pak-tala-n.

mu---hong-do-kai pang-maing-i ta na-kan-da.]

The chorus of _A-ra-rüng_ is invariable, but the verses which are sung
in connection with it take a wide range through the fields of lyrics,
epics, and didactics.

There is a third style, which is between the classical and the popular,
but which hardly deserves mention.

To my thinking, the melancholy which seems the _motif_ of most Oriental
music becomes an extreme plaintiveness in that of Korea, partly due
probably to the unlimited quavering on one note. While what may be
called concerted music is torture to a Western ear, solos on the
flute ofttimes combine a singular sweetness with their mournfulness
and suggest “Far-off Melodies.” Love songs are popular, and there is
a tender grace about some of them, as well as an occasional glint
of humor, as indicated by the last line of the third stanza of one
translated by Mr. Gale.[23] The allusions to Nature generally show
a quick and sympathetic insight into her beauties, and occasional
stanzas, of which the one cited is among several translated by Mr.
Hulbert, have a delicacy of touch not unworthy of an Elizabethan
poet.[24] The _Korean Repository_ is doing a good work in making Korean
poetry accessible to English readers.

There was not, however, any flute music at Ta-ri-mak. There were
classical songs, with a direful drum accompaniment, and a wearisome
repetition of the _A-ra-rüng_, continuing all day and late into the hot
night.

A few pedlars passed by, selling tobacco, necessaries, and children’s
toys, the latter rudely made, and only attractive in a country in which
artistic feeling appears dead. There are shops in Seoul, Phyöng-yang,
and other cities devoted to the sale of such toys, painted in staring
colors, and illustrative chiefly of adult life. There are also monkeys,
puppies, and tigers on wheels, all for boys, and soldiers in European
uniforms have appeared during the recent military craze, and boys are
very early taught to look forward to official life by representations
of mandarins’ chairs, red-tasselled umbrellas, and fringed hats. Girls
being of comparatively small account, toys specially suited to them are
not many.

Japanese lucifer matches, which, when of the cheap sort, seem only
slightly inflammable, as I have several times used a whole box without
igniting one, were in the stock of the pedlars, and are making rapid
headway in the towns, but even so near Wön-san as Ta-ri-mak is, the
people were still using flint and steel to light chips of wood dipped
in sulphur, though the cheap and smoky kerosene lamp has displaced the
tall, upright candlestick and the old-fashioned dish lamps there and in
very many other country places.

From the high-road from Seoul to Wön-san we diverged at Nam-San to
visit the large monastery of Sök-wang Sa, famous as being the place
where, in the palmy days of Korean Buddhism, Atai-jo, the first king of
the present dynasty, was educated and lived. The monastery itself, with
its temples, was erected by this king to mark the spot where, 504 years
ago, he received that supernatural message to rule in virtue of which
his descendant occupies the Korean throne to-day. In this singularly
beautiful spot Atai-jo’s early years were spent in religious exercises,
study, and preparation, and many of the superb trees which adorn the
grand mountain clefts in which Sök-wang Sa is situated are said to
have been planted by his hands. His regalia and robes of state are
preserved in a building by themselves, which no one is allowed to enter
except the duly appointed attendant. A bridle track alongside of a
clear mountain stream leads through very pretty and prosperous-looking
country, and over wooded foothills for some miles to the base of a
fine mountain range. We passed for a length of time through rich and
heavily-timbered monastic property, then the beautiful valley narrowed,
and by a “Red Arrow Gate” we entered on a smooth broad road, on which
the sun glinted here and there through the heavy foliage of an avenue
of noble pines, a gap now and then giving entrancing glimpses of the
deep delicious blue of the summer sky, of a grand gorge dark with
pines, firs, and the exotic _Cleyera Japonica_ and zelkawa, brightened
by the tender green of maples and other deciduous trees, and by flashes
of foam from a torrent booming among great moss-covered boulders.

Then came bridges with decorative roofs, abbots’ tombstones under
carved and painted canopies, inscribed stone tablets, glorious views
of a peaked, forest-clothed mountain barring the gorge, and as the
pines of the avenue fell into groups at its close, and magnificent
zelkawas, from whose spreading branches white roses hung in graceful
festoons, overarched the road, a long irregular line of temples and
monastic buildings appeared, clinging in singular picturesqueness to
the sides of the ravine, which there ascends somewhat rapidly towards
the mountain, which closes it.

An abbot, framed in the doorway of a quaint building, and looking like
a picture of a portly, jolly, mediæval friar, welcomed us, and he and
his monks regaled us with honey water in the large guest hall, but
simultaneously produced a visitors’ book and asked us how much we were
going to pay, the sum being duly recorded. The grasping ways of these
monks, who fleeced the _mapu_ so badly as to make them say they “had
fallen among thieves,” contrast with the friendly hospitality of their
brethren of the Diamond Mountain, and can only be accounted for by the
contaminating influences of a treaty port, from which they are distant
only a long day’s journey!

“See the sights first and then pay,” they said, the glorious views and
the quaint picturesqueness of the monastic buildings clustering on the
crags above the cataracts being the sight _par excellence_. It was
refreshing to turn from the contemplation of the sensual, acquisitive,
greedy faces of most of the monks to Nature at her freshest and
fairest, on one of the loveliest days of early June.

The interiors of the temples are shabby and dirty, the paint is scaling
off the roofs, and the floors and even the altars were hidden under
layers of herbs drying for kitchen use. Besides the tablet to the
first king of the present dynasty in a handsome tablet-house, the
noteworthy “sight” to be seen is a small temple dedicated to the “Five
Hundred Disciples.” Sök-wang Sa is not a holy place, and the artist who
caricatured the devout and ascetic followers of the ascetic Sakymuni
has bequeathed a legacy of unhallowed suggestion to its inmates!

The “Five Hundred” are stone images not a foot in height, arranged
round the dusty temple in several tiers, each one with a silk cap
on, worn with more or less of a jaunty air on one side of the head
or falling over the brow. The variety of features and expression is
wonderful; all Eastern nationalities are represented, and there are not
two faces or attitudes alike. The whole display shows genius, though
not of a high order.

Among the infinite variety, one figure has deeply set eyes, an aquiline
nose, and thin lips; another a pug nose, squinting eyes, and a broad
grinning mouth; one is Mongolian, another Caucasian, and another
approximates to the Negro type. Here is a stout, jolly fellow, with a
leer and a broad grin suggestive of casks of porter and the archaic
London drayman; there is an idiot with drooping head, receding brow
and chin, and a vacant stare; here again is a dark stage villain, with
red cheeks and a cap drawn low over his forehead; then Mr. Pecksniff
confronts one with an air of sanctimoniousness obviously difficult to
retain; Falstaff outdoes his legendary jollity; and priests and monks
of all nations leer at the beholders from under their jaunty caps. It
is an exhibition of unsanctified genius. Nearly all the figures look
worse for drink, and fatuous smiles, drunken leers, and farcical grins
are the rule, the effect of all being aggravated by the varied and
absurd arrangements of the caps. The grotesqueness is indescribable,
and altogether “unedifying.”

It was a great change to get on the broad main road to Wön-san, and to
see telegraph poles once more. There was plenty of goods and passenger
traffic across the fine plain covered with rice and grain, margined by
bluffs, and dotted with what have obviously once been islands, near
which Wön-san is situated.

Where the road is broad, a high heap of hardened mud runs along the
centre, with hardened mud corrugations on either side; where narrow, it
is merely the top of a rice dyke. The bridges are specially infamous;
in fact, they were so rotten that the _mapu_ would not trust their
ponies upon them, and we forded all the streams. Yet this road, which
I found equally bad at the three points at which I touched it, is one
of the leading thoroughfares by which goods pass from the east to the
west coast and _vice versa_,--tobacco, copper, salt fish, seaweed,
galena, and hides from the east, and foreign shirtings, watches, and
miscellaneous native and foreign articles from the west.

The heat of the sun was but poorly indicated by a shade temperature
of 84°, and it was in his full noontide fierceness that we reached
the huddle of foul and narrow alleys and irregular rows of thatched
shops along the high-road which make up the busy and growing Korean
town of Wön-san, which, with an estimated population of 15,000 people,
lies along a strip of beach below a pine-clothed bluff and ranges of
mountains, then green to their summits, but which I saw in December
of the same year in the majesty of the snow which covers them from
November to May. The smells were fearful, the dirt abominable, and the
quantity of wretched dogs and of pieces of bleeding meat blackening
in the sun perfectly sickening. This aspect of meat, produced by the
mode of killing it, has made foreigners entirely dependent on the
Japanese butchers in Seoul and elsewhere. The Koreans cut the throat
of the animal and insert a peg in the opening. Then the butcher takes
a hatchet and beats the animal on the rump until it dies. The process
takes about an hour, and the beast suffers agonies of terror and
pain before it loses consciousness. Very little blood is lost during
the operation; the beef is full of it, and its heavier weight in
consequence is to the advantage of the vendor.

Then came a level stretch of about a mile, much planted with potatoes,
glimpses of American Protestant mission-houses in conspicuous and
eligible positions (eligible, that is, for everything but mission
work), and the uneven Korean road glided imperceptibly into a broad
gravel road, fringed on both sides with neat wooden houses standing in
gardens, which gradually thickened into the neatest, trimmest, and most
attractive town in all Korea, the Japanese settlement of the treaty
port of Wön-san, opened to Japanese trade in 1880 and to foreign trade
generally in 1883.

Broad and well-kept streets, neat wharves, trim and fairly
substantial houses, showing the interior dollishness and daintiness
characteristic of Japan, a large and very prominent Japanese Consulate
in Anglo-Japanese style, the offices of the “N.Y.K.,” the Japan Mail
Steamship Company (an abbreviation as familiar to residents in the
Far East as “P. & O.”), a Japanese Bank of solid reputation, Customs’
buildings, of which a neat reading-room forms a part, neat Japanese
shops where European articles can be bought at moderate prices, a large
schoolhouse, with a teacher in European dress, and active manikins and
hobbling but graceful women, neither veiled nor muffled up, are the
features of this pleasant Japanese colony, which is so fortunate as to
have no history, its progress, though not rapid, having been placid
and peaceful, not marred by friction either with Koreans or foreigners
of other nationalities; and even the recent war, though it led to the
removal of the Chinese consul and his countrymen, an insignificant
fraction of the population, had left no special traces, except that the
enormous wages paid to transport coolies by the Japanese had enabled
them to gamble with _yen_ instead of _cash_!

I was most hospitably received by Mr. and Mrs. Gale of the American
Presbyterian Mission. Mr. Gale’s work was the important one of the
preparation of a dictionary of the Korean language in Korean, Chinese,
and English, which was published in 1897.

During the twelve days which I spent at Wön-san I made a junk excursion
in Yung-hing or Broughton Bay, in the southwest corner of which the
port is situated. It is a superb bay, with an area of fully 40 square
miles, a depth of from 6 to 12 fathoms, with good holding ground, never
freezes in winter, is sheltered by promontories and mountains from the
winds of every quarter, and its entrance is protected by islands. To
English readers it is probable that the sole interest of this fine
bay lies in the fact that its northern arm, Port Lazareff, which was
the object of my cruise, is the harbor which Russia is credited with
desiring to gain possession of for the terminus of her Trans-Siberian
Railway. Whether this be so or no, or whether Port Shestakoff, on the
same coast, but 60 miles farther north, is more defensible and better
adapted for a naval as well as a terminal port, the time has gone by
for grudging to Russia an outlet on the Pacific, and I for one should
prefer it on the coast of eastern Korea than on the northern shore of
the Yellow Sea.

The head of Port Lazareff is about 16 miles from Wön-san, and is formed
by the swampy outlets of the river Dun-gan, among the many branches of
which lie inhabited, low-lying islands. There are rude but extensive
salt works at the shallows in which this noble inlet terminates, after
receiving several streams besides the Dun-gan. Port Lazareff has, in
addition, abundant supplies of water from natural springs. The high
hills which surround the bay are grassy to their summits, but there
is very little wood, and the villages are small and far between. Game
is singularly abundant. Pheasants are nearly as plentiful as sparrows
are with us, the wary turkey bustard abounds, there are snipe in the
late summer, and pigeons, plover, and water-hen are common. In spring
and autumn wild fowl innumerable crowd the waters of every stream and
inlet, swans, teal, geese, and ducks darkening the air, which they rend
with their clamor as the sportsman invades their haunts.

A Korean junk does not impress one by its seaworthiness, and it is not
surprising that the junkmen hug the shore and seek shelter whenever
a good sailing breeze comes on. She is built without nails, iron, or
preservative paint, and looks rather like a temporary and fortuitous
aggregation of beams and planks than a deliberate construction. Two
tall, heavy masts fixed by wedges among the timbers at the bottom of
the boat require frequent attention, as they are always swaying and
threatening to come down. The sails are of matting, with a number of
bamboos running transversely, with a cord attached to each, united into
one sheet, by means of which tacking is effected, or rather might be.
Practically, navigation consists in running before a light breeze, and
dropping the mass of mats and bamboos on the confusion below whenever
it freshens, varying the process by an easy pull at the sweeps, one
at the stern and two working on pins in transverse beams amidships,
which project 3 feet on each side. The junk is fitted with a rudder of
enormous size, which from its position acts as a keel board. The price
is from 60 to 80 dollars. This singular craft sails well before the
wind, but under other circumstances is apt to become unmanageable.

Wön-san has telegraphic communication with Seoul, and chiefly through
the enterprise of the N.Y.K., it is connected by most comfortable
steamers with Korean ports and with Wladivostok, Kobe, and Nagasaki,
Hong-Kong, Shanghai, Chefoo, Newchwang, and Tientsin. Steamers of a
Russian line call there at intervals during the summer season. There
are no Western merchants or Western residents except the missionaries
and the Customs staff, and foreign trade is chiefly in the hands of the
Japanese.

About 60 _li_ from Wön-san are some large grass-covered mounds,
of which the Koreans do not care to speak, as they regard them as
associated with an ancient Korean custom, now looked upon as barbarous.
During the last dynasty, and more than five centuries ago, it was
customary, when people from age and infirmity became burdensome to
their relations, to incarcerate them in the stone cells which these
mounds contain, with a little food and water, and leave them there to
die. In similar mounds, elsewhere in Korea, bowls and jars of coarse
pottery have been found, as well as a few specimens of gray _celadon_.

There is nothing sensational about Wön-san.[25] It has no “booms” in
trade or land, but “keeps the even tenor of its way.” It is to me far
the most attractive of the treaty ports. Its trim Japanese settlement,
from which green hills rise abruptly, backed by fine mountain forms,
dignified by snow for seven months of the year, and above all, the
exquisite caves to the northwest, where the sea murmurs in cool
grottos, and beats the pure white sand into ripples at the feet of
cliffs hidden by flowers, ferns, and grass, and its air of dreamy
repose--“a land where it is always afternoon”--point to its future as
that of a salubrious and popular sanitarium.


FOOTNOTES:

[20] A _kwan-ja_, being an official passport, lays a traveller open to
the suspicion that, like officials, he will take the best of everything
he can get without paying for it, and this dread, added to a natural
distrust of foreigners, led to more or less unwillingness to receive us
in many places, the _mapu_ having to console the people by asseverating
that I paid the full price for all I got, and that even when I tore a
sheet of paper from the window I paid for it!

[21] February, 1896.

[22] I

  ’Twas years ago that Kim and I
  Struck hands and swore, however dry
  The lip might be or sad the heart,
  The merry wine should have no part
  In mitigating sorrow’s blow
  Or quenching thirst. ’Twas long ago.


II

  And now I’ve reached the flood-tide mark
  Of life; the ebb begins, and dark
  The future lowers. The tide of wine
  Will never ebb. ’Twill aye be mine
  To mourn the desecrated fane
  Where that lost pledge of youth lies slain.


III

  Nay, nay, begone! The jocund bowl
  Again shall bolster up my soul
  Against itself. What, good-man, hold!
  Canst tell me where red wine is sold?
  Nay, just beyond that peach tree there?
  Good luck be thine, I’ll thither fare.


[23] LOVE SONG

  Farewell’s a fire that burns one’s heart,
  And tears are rains that quench in part,
  But then the winds blow in one’s sighs,
  And cause the flames again to rise.

  My soul I’ve mixed up with the wine,
  And now my love is drinking,
  Into his orifices nine
  Deep down its spirit’s sinking.
  To keep him true to me and mine,
  A potent mixture is the wine.

  Silvery moon and frosty air,
  Eve and dawn are meeting;
  Widowed wild goose flying there,
  Hear my words of greeting!
  On your journey should you see
  Him I love so broken-hearted,
  Kindly say this word for me,
  That it’s death when we are parted.
  Flapping off the wild goose clambers,
  Says she will if she remembers.

  Fill the ink-stone, bring the water,
  To my love I’ll write a letter;
  Ink and paper soon will see
  The one that’s all the world to me,
  While the pen and I together,
  Left behind, condole each other.


[24]

  I asked the spotted butterfly.
  To take me on his wing and fly
  To yonder mountain’s breezy side.
  The trixy tiger moth I’ll ride
            As home I come.


[25] In January of 1897, the population of Wön-san was as follows:--

  Japanese       1,299
  Chinese           39
  American           8
  German             3
  British            2
  French             2
  Russian            2
  Danish             1
  Norwegian          1
                 -----
                 1,357

Estimated Korean population, 15,000.




CHAPTER XIII

IMPENDING WAR--EXCITEMENT AT CHEMULPO


Having heard nothing at all of public events during my long inland
journey, and only a few rumors of unlocalized collisions between the
Tong-haks (rebels) and the Royal troops, the atmosphere of _canards_
at Wön-san was somewhat stimulating, though I had already been long
enough in Korea not to attach much importance to the stories with
which the air was thick. One day it was said that the Tong-haks had
gained great successes and had taken Gatling guns from the Royal
army, another that they had been crushed and their mysterious and
ubiquitous leader beheaded, while the latest rumor before my departure
was that they were marching in great force on Fusan. Judging from the
proclamation which they circulated, and which, while stating that they
rose against corrupt officials and traitorous advisers, professed
unswerving loyalty to the throne, it seemed credible that, if there
were a throb of patriotism anywhere in Korea, it was in the breasts of
these peasants. Their risings appeared to be free from excesses and
useless bloodshed, and they confined themselves to the attempt to carry
out their programme of reform. Some foreign sympathy was bestowed upon
them, because it was thought that the iniquities of misrule could go no
further, and that the time was ripe for an armed protest on a larger
scale than the ordinary peasant risings against intolerable exactions.

But at the very moment when these matters were being discussed in
Wön-san with not more than a languid interest, a formidable menace
to the established order of things was taking shape, destined in a
few days to cast the Tong-haks into the shade, and concentrate the
attention of the world on this insignificant peninsula.

Leaving Wön-san by steamer on 17th June, and arriving at Fusan on the
19th, I was not surprised to find a Japanese gunboat in the harbor, and
that 220 Japanese soldiers had been landed from the _Higo Maru_ that
morning and were quartered in the Buddhist temples on the hill, and
that the rebels had cut the telegraph wires between Fusan and Seoul.

Among the few Europeans at Fusan there was no uneasiness. The Japanese,
with their large mercantile colony there, have considerable interests
to safeguard, and nothing seemed more natural than the course they
took. A rumor that Japanese troops had been landed at Chemulpo was
quite disregarded.

On arriving at Chemulpo, however, early on the morning of the 21st,
a very exciting state of matters revealed itself. A large fleet,
six Japanese ships of war, the American flag ship, two French, one
Russian, and two Chinese, were lying in the outer harbor. The limited
accommodation of the inner harbor was taxed to its utmost capacity.
Japanese transports were landing troops, horses, and war material in
steam launches, junks were discharging rice and other stores for the
commissariat department, coolies were stacking it on the beach, and
the movement by sea and land was ceaseless. Visitors from the shore,
excited and agitated, brought a budget of astounding rumors, but
confessed to being mainly in the dark.

On landing, I found the deadly dull port transformed: the streets
resounded to the tread of Japanese troops in heavy marching order,
trains of mat and forage carts blocked the road. Every house in the
main street of the Japanese settlement was turned into a barrack and
crowded with troops, rifles and accoutrements gleamed in the balconies,
crowds of Koreans, limp and dazed, lounged in the streets or sat on
the knolls, gazing vacantly at the transformation of their port into a
foreign camp. Only two hours had passed since the first of the troops
landed, and when I visited the camp with a young Russian officer there
were 1,200 men under canvas in well-ventilated bell tents, holding 20
each, with matted floors and drainage trenches, and dinner was being
served in lacquer boxes. Stables had been run up, and the cavalry
and mountain guns were in the centre. The horses of the mountain
battery train, serviceable animals, fourteen hands high, were in
excellent condition, and were equipped with pack saddles of the latest
Indian pattern. They were removing shot and shell for Seoul from the
Japanese Consulate with 200 men and 100 horses, and it was done almost
soundlessly. The camp, with its neat streets, was orderly, trim, and
quiet. In the town sentries challenged passers-by. Every man looked
as if he knew his duty and meant to do it. There was no swagger. The
manikins, well armed and serviceably dressed, were obviously in Korea
for a purpose which they meant to accomplish.

What that purpose was, was well concealed under color of giving
efficient protection to Japanese subjects in Korea, who were said to be
imperilled by the successes of the Tong-haks.

The rebellion in southern Korea was exciting much alarm in the capital.
Such movements, though on a smaller scale, are annual spring events in
the peninsula, when in one or other of the provinces the peasantry,
driven to exasperation by official extortions, rise, and, with more or
less violence (occasionally fatal), drive out the offending mandarin.
Punishment rarely ensues. The King sends a new official, who squeezes
and extorts in his turn with more or less vigor, until, if he also
passes bearable limits, he is forcibly expelled, and things settle down
once more. This Tong-hak (“Oriental” or “National”) movement, though
lost sight of in presence of more important issues, was of greater
moment, as being organized on a broader basis, so as to include a
great number of adherents in Seoul and the other cities, and with such
definite and reasonable objects that at first I was inclined to call
its leaders “armed reformers” rather than “rebels.” At that time there
was no question as to the Royal authority.

The Tong-hak proclamation began by declaring in respectful language
loyal allegiance to the King, and went on to state the grievances in
very moderate terms. The Tong-haks asserted, and with undoubted truth,
that officials in Korea, for their own purposes, closed the eyes and
ears of the King to all news and reports of the wrongs inflicted on
his people. That ministers of State, governors, and magistrates were
all indifferent to the welfare of their country, and were bent only on
enriching themselves, and that there were no checks on their rapacity.
That examinations (the only avenues to official life) were nothing more
than scenes of bribery, barter, and sale, and were no longer tests
of fitness for civil appointment. That officials cared not for the
debt into which the country was fast sinking. That “they were proud,
vainglorious, adulterous, avaricious.” That many officials receiving
appointments in the country lived in Seoul. That “they flatter and fawn
in peace, and desert and betray in times of trouble.”

The necessity for reform was strongly urged. There were no expressions
of hostility to foreigners, and the manifesto did not appear to
take any account of them. The leader, whose individuality was never
definitely ascertained, was credited with ubiquity and supernatural
powers by the common people, as well as with the ability to speak
both Japanese and Chinese, and it was evident from his measures,
forethought, the disposition of his forces, and some touches of Western
strategic skill, that he had some acquaintance with the modern art of
war. His followers, armed at first with only old swords and halberds,
had come to possess rifles, taken from the official armories and the
defeated Royal troops. For in the midst of the thousand wild rumors
which were afloat, it appeared certain that the King sent several
hundred soldiers against the Tong-haks under a general who, on his
way to attack their camp, raised and armed 300 levies, who, in the
engagement which followed, joined the “rebels” and turned upon the
King’s troops, that 300 of the latter were killed, and that the general
was missing. This, following other successes, the deposition of several
important officials, and the rumored march on Seoul, had created great
alarm, and the King was supposed to be prepared for flight.

But the events of the two or three days before I landed at Chemulpo
threw the local disturbance into the shade, and it is only with the
object of showing with what an excellent pretext for interference the
Tong-haks had furnished the Japanese, that I recall this petty chapter
of what is now ancient history.

The questions vital to Korea and of paramount diplomatic importance
were, “What is the object of Japan? Is this an invasion? Is she here as
an enemy or a friend?” Six thousand troops provisioned for three months
had been landed. Fifteen of the _Nippon Yusen Kaisha’s_ steamers had
been withdrawn from their routes to act as transports, the Japanese
had occupied the Gap, a pass on the Seoul road, and Ma-pu, the river
port of the capital, and with guns, and in considerable force, had
established themselves on Nam Han, a wooded hill above Seoul, from
which position they commanded both the palace and capital. All these
movements were carried out with a suddenness, celerity, and freedom
from hitch which in their military aspects were worthy of the highest
praise.

To any student of Far Eastern politics it must have been apparent that
this skilful and extraordinary move on the part of Japan was not made
for the protection of her colonies in Chemulpo and Seoul, nor yet
against Korea. It has been said in various quarters, and believed,
that the Japanese ministry was shaky, and had to choose between its
own downfall and a foreign war. This is a complete sophism. There
can be no question that Japan had been planning such a movement for
years. She had made accurate maps of Korea, and had secured reports
of forage and provisions, measurements of the width of rivers and
the depth of fords, and had been buying up rice in Korea for three
months previously, while even as far as the Tibetan frontier, Japanese
officers in disguise had gauged the strength and weakness of China,
reporting on her armies on paper and, in fact, on her dummy guns, and
antique, honeycombed carronades, and knew better than the Chinese
themselves how many men each province could put into the field, how
drilled and how armed, and they were acquainted with the infinite
corruption and dishonesty, combined with a total lack of patriotism,
which nullified even such commissariat arrangements as existed on
paper, and rendered it absolutely impossible for China to send an army
efficiently into the field, far less sustain it during a campaign.

To all appearance Japan had completely outwitted China in Korea, and a
panic prevailed among the Chinese. Thirty ladies of the households of
the Chinese Resident and Consul embarked for China on the appearance
of the Japanese in Seoul, and 800 Chinamen left Chemulpo the day I
arrived, the consternation in the Chinese colony being so great that
even the market gardeners, who have a monopoly of a most thriving
trade, fled.

I never before saw the Chinaman otherwise than aggravatingly cool,
collected, and master of the situation, but on that June day he
lost his head, and, frenzied by race hatred and pecuniary loss, was
transformed into a shouting barbarian, not knowing what he would
be at. The Chinese inn where I spent the day was one centre of the
excitement, and each time that I came in from a walk or received a
European visitor, a number of the _employés_, usually most quiet and
reticent, huddled into my room with faces distorted by anxiety, asking
what I had heard, what was going to be, whether the Chinese army would
be there that night, whether the British fleet was coming to help them,
etc., and even my Chinese servant, a most excellent fellow, was beside
himself, muttering in English through clenched teeth, “I must kill,
kill, kill!”

Meanwhile the dwarf battalions, a miracle of rigid discipline and good
behavior, were steadily tramping to Seoul, where matters then and for
some time afterwards stood thus. The King was in his secluded palace,
and that which still posed as a Government had really collapsed. Mr.
Hillier, the English Consul-General, was in England on leave, and the
acting Consul-General, Mr. Gardner, C.M.G., had only been in Korea
for three months. The American Minister was a newer man still. The
French and German Consuls need hardly be taken into account, as they
had few, if any, interests to safeguard. Mr. Waeber, the able and
cautious diplomatist who had represented Russia for nine years, and
had the confidence of the whole foreign community, had been appointed
_chargé d’affaires_ at Peking, and had left Seoul in the previous week.
There remained, therefore, facing each other, Otori San, the Japanese
ambassador to Peking, who was in Korea on a temporary mission, and
Yuan, a military mandarin who had been for some years Chinese Resident
in Seoul, a man entrusted by the Chinese Emperor with large powers, who
was credited by foreigners with great force, tact, and ability, and who
was generally regarded as “the power behind the throne.”

I had frequently seen Otori San in the early months of the year, a
Japanese of average height, speaking English well, wearing European
dress as though born to it, and sporting white “shoulder-of-mutton”
whiskers. He lounged in drawing-rooms, making trivial remarks to
ladies, and was remarkable only for his insignificance. I believe
he made the same impression, or want of impression, at Peking. But
circumstances or stringent orders from Tokyo had transformed Mr. Otori.
Whether he had worn a mask previously I know not, but he showed himself
rough, vigorous, capable, a man of action, unscrupulous, and not only
clever enough to outwit Yuan in a difficult and hazardous game, but
everybody else.

In the afternoon of that memorable day at Chemulpo the Vice-Consul
called on me and warned me that I must leave Korea that night, and
the urgency and seriousness of his manner left me no doubt that he
was acting on information which he was not at liberty to divulge. I
had left my travelling gear at Wön-san in readiness for an autumn
journey, and was going to Seoul that night for a week to get my money
and civilized luggage before going for the summer to Japan. It was a
serious blow. Other Europeans advised me not to be “deported,” but it
is one of my travelling rules never to be a source of embarrassment
to British officials, and supposing the crisis to be an acute one, I
reluctantly yielded, and that night, with two English fellow-sufferers,
left Chemulpo in the Japanese steamer _Higo Maru_, bound for ports
in the Gulf of Pechili, which _cul-de-sac_ would have proved a
veritable “lion’s mouth” to her had hostilities been as imminent as
the Vice-Consul believed them to be. I had nothing but the clothing I
wore, a heavy tweed suit, and the mercury was 80°, and after paying my
passage to Chefoo, the first port of call, I had only four cents left.
It was four months before I obtained either my clothes or my money!




CHAPTER XIV

DEPORTED TO MANCHURIA


Though I landed at Chefoo in heavy tweed clothing, I was obliged to
walk up the steep hill to the British Consulate, though the mercury
was 84° in the shade, because I had no money with which to pay for a
_jinriksha_! My reflections were anything but pleasant. My passport
and letters of introduction, both private and official, were in
Seoul, my travelling dress was distinctly shabby, and I feared that
an impecunious person without introductions, and unable to prove
her identity, might meet with a very cool reception. I experienced
something of the anxiety and timidity which are the everyday lot of
thousands, and I have felt a far tenderer sympathy with the penniless,
specially the educated penniless, ever since. I was so extremely
uncomfortable that I hung about the gate of the British Consulate for
some minutes before I could summon up courage to go to the door and
send in a torn address of a letter which was my only visiting card! I
thought, but it may have been fancy, that the Chinese who took it eyed
me suspiciously and contemptuously.

The sudden revulsion of feeling which followed I cannot easily forget.
Mr. Clement Allen, our justly popular Consul, met me with a warm
welcome. I needed no proof of identity or anything else, he only
desired to know what he could do for me. My anxiety was not quite over,
for I had to make the humiliating confession that I needed money,
and immediately he took me to Messrs. Ferguson and Co., who transact
banking business, and asked them to let me have as much as I wanted. An
invitation to tiffin followed, and Lady O’Conor, and the wife of the
Spanish minister at Peking, who were staying at the Consulate, made up
a bundle of summer clothing for me, and my “deportation” enriched me
with valued friendships.

Returning in a very different frame of mind to the _Higo Maru_, I went
on in her in severe heat to the mouth of the Peiho River in sight of
the Taku forts, and after rolling on its muddy surges for two days,
proceeded to Newchwang in Manchuria, reaching the mouth of the Liau
River in five days from Chemulpo. Rain was falling, and a more hideous
and disastrous-looking country than the voyage of two hours up to the
port revealed, I never saw. The Liau, which has a tremendous tide and
strong current, and is thick with yellow mud, is at high water nearly
on a level with the adjacent flats, of which one sees little, except
some mud forts on the left bank of the river, which are said to be
heavily armed with Krupp guns, and an expanse of mud and reeds.

Of the mud-built Chinese city of Ying-tzŭ (Military Camp), known as
Newchwang, though the real Newchwang is a derelict port 30 miles up
the Liau, nothing can be seen above the mud bank but the curved, tiled
roofs of _yamens_ and temples, though it is a city of 60,000 souls,
the growth of its population having kept pace with its rapid advance
in commercial importance since it was opened to foreign trade in 1860.
Several British steamers with big Chinese characters on their sides
were at anchor in the tideway, and the river sides were closely fringed
with up-river boats and sea-going junks, of various picturesque builds
and colors, from Southern China, steamers and junks alike waiting not
only for cargoes of the small beans for which Manchuria is famous, but
for the pressed bean cake which is exported in enormous quantities to
fertilize the sugar plantations and hungry fields of South China.

There is a Bund, and along and behind it is the foreign settlement,
occupied by about forty Europeans. The white buildings of the Chinese
Imperial Maritime Customs, the houses of the staff, the _hongs_ of two
or three foreign merchants, and the British Consular buildings, may be
said to constitute the settlement. It has the reputation of being one
of the kindliest and friendliest in the Far East, and the fact that the
river closes annually about the 20th of November for about four months,
and that the residents are thrown entirely on their own resources and
on each other, only serves to increase that inter-dependence which
binds this and similarly isolated communities so strongly together.

I was most kindly welcomed at the English Consulate then and on my
return, and have most pleasant remembrances of Newchwang, its cordial
kindness, and cheerful Bund, and breezy blue skies, but at first sight
it is a dreary, solitary-looking place of mud, and muddy waters for
ever swallowing large slices of the land, and threatening to engulf it
altogether.

“Peas,” really beans,[26] are its chief _raison d’être_, and their ups
and downs in price its mild sensations. “Pea-boats,” long and narrow,
with matting roofs and one huge sail, bring down the beans from the
interior, and mills working night and day express their oil, which is
as good for cooking as for burning.

The viceroyalty of Manchuria, in which I spent the next two months,
is interesting as in some ways distinct from China, besides having a
prospective interest in connection with Russia. Lying outside of the
Great Wall, it has a population of several distinct and mixed races,
Manchus (Tartars), Gilyaks, Tungusi, Solons, Daurs, and Chinese. Along
with these must be mentioned about 30,000 Korean families, the majority
of whom have left Korea since 1868, in consequence of political
disturbance and official exactions.[27]

The facts that the dynasty which has ruled China by right of conquest
since 1644 is a Manchu dynasty, and that it imposed the shaven
forehead and the pigtail on all Chinese men successfully, while it
absolutely failed to prevent the women from crippling their feet,
though up to this day no woman with “Golden Lilies” (crushed feet) is
allowed to enter the Imperial palace, naturally turn attention to this
viceroyalty, which, in point of its area of 380,000 square miles, is
larger than Austria and Great Britain and Ireland put together, while
its population is estimated at from 18,000,000 to 20,000,000 only. Thus
it offers a vast field for emigration from the congested provinces of
Northern China, and Chinese immigrants are steadily flocking in from
Shan-tung, Chi-li, and Shen-si, so that Southern Manchuria at this time
is little behind the inner provinces of China in density of population.

It is different in the northern province, where a cold climate and
vast stretches of forest render agriculture more difficult. If it had
not been for the war and its attendant complications, I had purposed
to travel through it from Northern Korea. But it is unsettled at all
times. The majority of its immigrants consists of convicts, fugitive
criminals, soldiers who have left the colors, and gold and ginseng
hunters. There is something almost comical about some of the doings of
this unpromising community.

It comprises large organized bands of mounted brigands, well led and
armed, who do not hesitate to come into collision with the Imperial
troops, frequently coming off victors, and at times, as when I was
in Mukden, wresting forts from their hands. During the Taiping
rebellion, when the Chinese troops were withdrawn from Manchuria,
these bands carried havoc and terror everywhere, and seizing upon
towns and villages, ruled them by right of conquest![28] In recent
years the Government has decided to let voluntary colonists settle
in the northern provinces, and has even furnished them with material
assistance.

Still, things are bad, and the brigands have come to be regarded as a
necessary evil, and are “arranged with.” They are not scrupulous as to
human life, and when they catch a rich merchant from the south, they
send an envoy to his guild with a claim for ransom, strengthened by the
threat that if it is not forthcoming in so many days, the captive’s
head will be cut off. Winter, when the mud is frozen hard, is the only
time for the transit of goods by land, and long trains of mule carts
may then be seen, a hundred or more together, starting from Newchwang,
Mukden, and other southern cities, each carrying a small flag, which
denotes that a suitable blackmail has been paid to an agent of the
brigand chiefs, and that they will not be robbed on the journey! Later,
when I was on the Siberian frontier of Manchuria, the brigands were in
great force, and having been joined by half-starved deserters from the
Chinese army, were harrying the country, and the peasants were flying
in terror from their farms.

Among the curious features of Manchurian brigandage, is that its
virulence rises or falls with good or bad harvests, inundations, etc.
For many of the usually respectable peasant farmers, in times of floods
and scanty crops, join the robber bands, returning to their honest
avocations the next season!

In spite, however, of this terrorism in the northeast, Manchuria is one
of the most prosperous of the Chinese viceroyalties, and its foreign
trade is assuming annually increasing importance.[29]

I was disappointed to find that the Manchus (or Tartars) differ
little in appearance from the race which they have subdued. The women,
however, are taller, comelier, and more robust in appearance, as may
be expected from their retaining the natural size and shape of their
feet, and not only their _coiffure_ but their costume is different, the
Manchu women wearing sleeveless dresses from the throat to the feet,
over under dresses with wide embroidered sleeves. With some exceptions,
they are less secluded than their Chinese sisters, and have an air of
far greater freedom.

Most of the Manchu customs have disappeared along with the language,
which is only spoken in a few remote valleys, and is apparently only
artificially preserved because the ruling dynasty is Manchu. It is only
those students who are aspirants for literary degrees and high office
in the viceroyalty who are obliged to learn it.

People of pure Manchu race are chiefly met with in the north. Manchus,
as kinsmen of the present Imperial dynasty, enjoy various privileges.
Every male adult, as soon as he can string a short and remarkably
inflexible bow (no easy task), becomes a “Bannerman,” _i.e._ he is
enrolled in one of eight bodies of irregulars, called “Banners” from
their distinctive flags, and from that time receives one _tael_
(now about three shillings) per month, increased to from five to
seven _taels_ a month when on active service. These “Bannermen,” as
a rule, are not specially reputable characters. They gamble, hang
about _yamens_ for odd bits of work, in hope of permanent official
employment, and generally sublet to the Chinese the lands which they
receive from the Government.

It is a singular anomaly that bows and arrows are relied upon as
a means of defence in an empire which buys rifles and Krupp guns.
Later, in Peking, which was supposed to be threatened by the Japanese
armies, it was intended to post Bannermen with bows and arrows at
the embrasures of the wall, and on the Peking and Tungchow road I
met twenty carts carrying up loads of these primitive weapons for
the defence of the capital! Bow and arrow drill is one of the most
amusing of the many military mediæval sights of China. The Chinese
Bannermen are descendants of those Chinese who, in the seventeenth
century, espoused the cause of the Manchu conquerors of China. The
whole military force of the three provinces of the viceroyalty is
280,000 men. Tartar garrisons and “Tartar cities” exist in many of the
great provincial cities of China, and as the interests of these troops
are closely bound up with those of the present Tartar dynasty, their
faithfulness is relied upon as the backbone of Imperial security.

From its history and its audacious and permanent conquest of its
gigantic neighbor, its mixed population and numerous aboriginal
tribes, its mineral and agricultural wealth, and a certain freedom and
breeziness which constitute a distinctive feature, Manchuria is a very
interesting viceroyalty, and the two months which I spent in it gave it
a strong hold upon me.

Mud is a great feature of Newchwang, perhaps the leading feature
for some months of the year, during which no traffic by road is
possible, and the Bund is the only practicable walk. The night I
arrived rain began, and continued with one hour’s cessation for five
days and nights, for much of the time coming down like a continuous
thundershower. The atmosphere was steamy and hazy, and the mercury by
day and night was pretty stationary at 78°. About 8.46 inches of rain
fell on those days. The barometer varied from 29° to 29.3°. Afterwards,
when the rain ceased for a day, the heat was nearly unbearable. Of
course, no boat’s crew would start under such circumstances. Rumors of
an extensive inundation came down the river, but these and all others
of purely local interest gave place to an intense anxiety as to whether
war would be declared, and what the effect of war would be on the great
trading port of Newchwang.


FOOTNOTES:

[26] _Glycene hispides_ (Dr. Morrison).

[27] According to information obtained by the Russian Diplomatic
Mission in Peking.

[28] Information received by the Russian Diplomatic Mission in Peking.

[29] Taking the port of Newchwang, through which, with certain
exceptions, all exports of native produce and imports of foreign
merchandise and Chinese productions pass, in 1871 16 steamers and
203 sailing vessels entered the port, with a total tonnage of 65,933
tons; in 1881, 114 steamers and 218 sailing vessels, with a tonnage of
159,098 tons; and in 1891, 372 steamers and 61 sailing vessels, with a
total tonnage of 334,709 tons. In the same period, British tonnage had
increased from 38.6 of the whole to 58 per cent. of the whole. In 1871
German tonnage nearly equalled British, being 37.6 of the whole, but it
had declined in 1891 to 28 per cent. of the whole.




CHAPTER XV

A MANCHURIAN DELUGE--A PASSENGER CART--AN ACCIDENT


It surprised me much to find that only one foreign resident had visited
Mukden, which is only 120 miles distant by a road which is traversable
in winter, and is accessible by river during the summer and autumn in
from eight to ten days. I left Newchwang on the 3rd of July, and though
various circumstances were unpropitious, reached Mukden in eight days,
being able to avoid many of the windings of the Liau by sailing over an
inundation.

The kindly foreign community lent me necessaries for the journey, but
even with these the hold of a “pea-boat” was not luxurious. My camp-bed
took up the greater part of it, and the roof was not much above my
head. The descent into the hold and the ascent were difficult, and
when wind and rain obliged me to close the front, it was quite dark,
cockroaches swarmed, and the smell of the bilge water was horrible.
I was very far from well when I started, and in two days was really
ill, yet I would not have missed the special interest of that journey
for anything, or its solitude, for Wong’s limited English counted for
nothing and involved no conversational effort.

For some distance above Newchwang or Ying-tzŭ, as far as the real
Newchwang, there is a complication of muddy rivers hurrying through
vast reed beds, the resort of wild fowl, with here and there a mud bank
with a mud hovel or two upon it. At that time reed beds and partially
inundated swamps stretched away nearly to the horizon, which is limited
in the far distance by the wavy blue outline of some low hills.

We ran up the river till the evening of the second day before a
fair wind, and then were becalmed on a reedy expanse swarming with
mosquitos. The mercury was at 89° in the hold that night. I had
severe fever, with racking pains in my head, back, and limbs, and in
the morning the stamping of the junkmen to and fro, along the narrow
strip of deck outside the roof, was hardly bearable. Wong had used up
the ample supply of water, and there was nothing wherewith to quench
thirst but the brown, thick water of the Liau, the tea made with which
resembled peasoup.

On the morning of the third day it began to rain and blow, and for the
next awful four days the wind and rain never ceased. The oiled paper
which had been tacked over the roof of the boat was torn into strips by
the violence of the winds, which forced the rain through every chink.
I lay down that night with the mercury at 80°, woke feeling very cold,
but, though surprised, fell asleep again. Woke again much colder,
feeling as if my feet were bandaged together, extricated myself with
difficulty, struck a light, and got up into 6 inches of a mixture of
bilge water and rain water, with an overpowering stench, in or on which
all things were sunk or floating. Wondered again at being so very cold,
found the temperature at 84°, and that I had been sleeping under a
wringing sheet in soaked clothing and on soaked sacking, under a soaked
mosquito net, and that there was not a dry article in the hold. For the
next three days and nights things remained in the same condition, and
though I was really ill I had to live in wet clothing and drink the
“liquid cholera” of the flood, all the wells being submerged.

Telegrams later in the English papers announced “Great floods in
Manchuria,” but of the magnitude of the inundation which destroyed for
that season the magnificent crops of the great fertile plain of the
Liau, and swept away many of its countless farming villages, only the
experience of sailing over it could give any idea.

In that miserable night there were barkings of dogs, shouts of men,
mewings of cats, and general noises of unrest, and in the morning, of
the village of Piengdo opposite to which we had moored the evening
before, only one house and a barn remained, which were shortly carried
away. Many of the people had escaped in boats, and the remainder, with
their fowls, dogs, and cats, were in the spreading branches of a large
tree. Although the mast of my boat was considerably in the way, and it
was difficult to make fast, I succeeded in rescuing the whole menagerie
and in transferring it in two trips to a village on the other side,
which was then 5 feet above the water.

We had reached the most prosperous region of Manchuria, a plain 60
miles in length, of deep, rich alluvial soil, bearing splendid crops,
the most lucrative of which are the bean, the oil from which is the
staple export of the country, the opium poppy, and tobacco. The great
and small millet, wheat, barley, melons, and cucumbers cover the
ground, mulberry trees for the silkworm surround the farmhouses, and
the great plain is an idyll of bounteousness and fertility. Of all this
not a trace remained, except in a few instances the tops of the 8-feet
millet, which supplies the people not only with food, but with fuel,
and fodder for their animals.

The river bank burst during the night, and the waters were raging into
the plain, from which I missed many a brown-roofed village, which the
evening before stood among its willow and poplar trees. At 11 a fair
wind sprang up, junks began to move, and my boatmen, who had talked of
returning, untied and moved too. After an exciting scene at a bend,
where the river, leaping like a rapid, thumped the junks against the
opposite shore, we passed one wrecked village after another, bits of
walls of houses alone standing. The people and their fowls were in
the trees. The women clung to their fowls as much as to their babies.
Dugouts, scows, and a few junks, mine among them, were busy saving
life, and we took three families and their fowls to Sho-wa Ku, a
large junk port, where a number of houses were still standing. These
families had lost all their household goods and gods, as well as mules,
pigs, and dogs. On our way we sailed into a farmyard to try to get
some eggs, and the junk not replying to her helm, thumped one of the
undermined walls down. It was a large farmhouse and full of refugees.
The water was 3 feet deep in the rooms, naked children were floating
about in tubs, and the women, looking resigned, sat on the tables. The
men said that it was the last of four houses, and that they might as
well be dead, for they had lost all their crops and their beasts.

A fearful sight presented itself at Sho-wa Ku. There the river,
indefinite as it had previously been, disappeared altogether, and the
whole country was a turbulent muddy sea, bounded on the east by a range
of hills, and to the north and south limitless. Under it lay all the
fruits of the tireless industry and garden cultivation of a large and
prosperous population, and the remorseless waters under the influence
of a gale were rolling in muddy surges, “crested with tawny foam,” over
the fast dissolving homes.

On this vast flood we embarked to shorten the distance, and sailed with
three reefs in the sail for 13 miles over it, till we were brought up
by an insurmountable obstacle in the shape of a tremendous rush of
water where a bank had given way. There we were compelled to let go two
anchors in the early afternoon. The wind had become foul, and the rain,
which fell in torrents, was driven almost horizontally. Nothing that
suggested human life was in sight. It might have been “the Deluge,” for
the windows of heaven were opened. There were a muddy, rolling sea, and
a black sky, dark with tremendous rain, and the foliage of trees with
submerged trunks was alone suggestive of even vegetable life and of the
villages which had been destroyed by the devouring waters.

In 13 miles just one habitation remained standing, a large, handsome
brick house with entrance arch, quadrangle, curved roofs, large farm
buildings, and many servants’ houses, some of which were toppling, and
others were submerged up to their roofs. There was a lookout on the
principal roof and he hailed us, but as there were several scows about,
enough to save life, I disregarded him, and we sailed on into the
tempestuous solitude where we anchored.

The day darkened slowly into night, the junk rolled with short plunging
rolls, the rain fell more tremendously than ever, and the strong
wind, sweeping through the rigging with a desolate screech, only just
overpowered the clatter on the roof. I was ill. The seas we shipped
drowned the charcoal, and it was impossible to make tea or arrowroot.
The rain dripped everywhere through the roof. My lamp spluttered and
went out and could not be relighted, bedding and clothing were soaked,
my bed stood in the water, the noise was deafening.

Never in all my journeys have I felt so solitary. I realized that no
other foreigner was travelling in Manchuria, that there was no help
in illness, and that there was nothing to be done but lie there in
saturated clothes till things took a turn for the better.

And so they did. By eight the next morning the scene was changed. The
sky was blue and cloudless, there was a cool north wind, and the waste
of water dimpled and glittered, the broken sparkle of its mimic waves
suggesting the ocean after a destructive storm has become a calm. After
sailing over broad blue water all day, and passing “islands” on which
the luckier villages were still standing, towards evening we sailed
into a village of large farmhouses and made fast to the window-bars of
one of them, which, being of brick, had not suffered greatly. Eleven of
the farms had disappeared, and others were in process of disappearing.
The gardens, farmyards, and open spaces were under 5 feet of water,
the surface of which was covered by a bubbly scum. The horses and
cattle were in the rooms of the brick houses where many human beings
had taken refuge. A raft made of farming implements ferried the people
among the few remaining dwellings.

At that farm the skipper brought a quantity of rice for his family,
and by a lovely moonlight we sailed over the drowned country to his
village. The flood currents were strong, and when we got there we were
driven against two undermined houses and knocked them down, afterwards
drifting into a road with fine trees which entangled the mast and sail,
and our stern bumped down the wall of the road, and the current carried
us into a square of semi-submerged houses, and eventually we got into
the skipper’s garden, and saw his family mounted on tables and chairs
on the top of the _kang_.

Two uneventful days followed. The boatmen were in ceaseless dread of
pirates, and I was so ill that I felt I would rather die than make
another effort.

Arriving within 3 miles of Mukden, Wong engaged a passenger cart,
a conveyance of the roughest description, which is only rendered
tolerable by having its back, sides, and bottom padded with mattresses,
and I was destitute of everything! Nothing can exaggerate the horrors
of an unameliorated Chinese cart on an infamous road. Down into ruts
2 feet deep, out of which three fine mules could scarcely extricate
us, over hillocks and big gnarled roots of trees, through quagmires
and banked ditches, where, in dread of the awful jerk produced by the
mules making a non-simultaneous jump up the farther side, I said to
myself, “This is my last hour,” getting a blow on my head which made
me see a shower of sparks--so I entered the gate of the outer wall of
beaten clay 11¹⁄₂ miles in circuit which surrounds the second city of
the empire. Then, through a quagmire out of which we were dragged by
seven mules, I bruised, breathless, and in great pain, and up a bank
where the cart turned over, pulled the mules over with it, and rolled
down a slight declivity, I found myself in the roof with the cameras
on the top of me and my right arm twisted under me, a Chinese crowd
curious to see the “foreign devil,” a vague impress of disaster in my
somewhat dazed brain, and Wong raging at large! Then followed a shady
compound ablaze with flowers, a hearty welcome at the house of Dr.
Ross, the senior missionary of the Scotch U.P. Church, sweet homelike
rooms in a metamorphosed Chinese house, a large shady bedroom replete
with comforts, the immediate arrival of Dr. Christie, the medical
missionary, who pronounced my arm-bone “splintered” and the tendons
severely torn, and placed the limb in splints, and a time of kind and
skilled nursing by Mrs. Ross, and of dreamy restfulness, in which the
horrors of the hold of the “pea-boat” and of the dark and wind-driven
flood only served to emphasize the comfort and propitiousness of my
surroundings.

[Illustration: PASSENGER CART, MUKDEN.]




CHAPTER XVI

MUKDEN AND ITS MISSIONS


Mukden stands at an altitude of 160 feet above the sea, in Lat. 41° 51′
N. and Long. 123° 37′ E., in the centre of an immense alluvial plain,
bearing superb crops and liberally sprinkled with farming villages
embowered in wood, a wavy line of low blue hills at a great distance
limiting the horizon. It is 3 miles from the Hun-ho, a tributary of
the Liau, and within its outer wall idles along the silvery Siao-ho
or “small river,” with a long Bund affording a delightful promenade
and an airy position for a number of handsome houses, the residences
of missionaries and mandarins, with stately outer and inner gates,
through which glimpses are obtained of gardens and flowering plants
and pots. This city of 260,000 inhabitants, owing to its connection
with the reigning dynasty, is the second city officially in the empire,
and the Peking “boards” with one exception are nominally duplicated
there. Hence it not only has an army of Chinese and Tartar officials of
all grades, but a large resident population of retired and expectant
mandarins, living in handsome houses and making a great display in the
streets. There is an incessant movement of mule carts, the cabs of
Mukden, with their superb animals and their blue canopies covering both
mule and driver, official mule carts driven at a trot, with four or
more outriders with white hats and red plumes, private carts belonging
to young mandarin swells, who give daily entertainments at a restaurant
on the Bund, mandarins on horseback with runners clearing the way,
carts waiting for “lotus viewers,” tall, “big-footed” women promenading
with their children, their hair arranged in loops on silver frames and
decorated with flowers, hospital patients on stretchers and in chairs,
men selling melons and candies, and beggars who by blowing through a
leaf imitate the cry of nearly every bird. Then in the summer evenings,
when the mercury has fallen to 80°, the servants of rich men bring out
splendid ponies and mules and walk them on the Bund, and there come
the crowds to stare at the foreigners and hang round their gates. The
presence of well-dressed women is a feature rare in the East. Up to the
war people were polite and friendly, but progress was difficult and the
smell of garlic strong. At night the dogs bark, guns are fired, drums
and gongs are beaten, and the clappers of the watchmen rival each other
in making night hideous.

All this life lies between the outer wall and the lofty quadrangular
inner wall, 3 miles in circuit, built of brick, flanked by lofty
towers, and pierced by eight gates protected by lofty brick bastions.
This wall, on which three carriages could drive abreast, protects the
commercial and official part of the city, which is densely crowded,
Mukden, besides being a great grain emporium, being the centre of the
Chinese fur trade, which attracts buyers from all parts of the world.
Fine streets, though full of humps and quagmires, divide the city into
nine wards or quarters, the central quarter being Imperial property,
and containing a fine palace with much decorative yellow tiling, the
examination hall, and a number of palaces and _yamens_, all solidly
built. To my thinking no Chinese city is so agreeable as Mukden. The
Tartar capital is free from that atmosphere of decay which broods over
Peking. Its wide streets are comparatively clean. It is regularly
built, and its fine residences are well kept up. It is a busy place,
and does a large and lucrative trade, specially in grain, beans, and
furs. It has various industries, which include the tanning and dressing
of furs and the weaving of silk stuffs; its bankers and merchants are
rich, and it has great commercial as well as some political importance.

[Illustration: TEMPLE OF GOD OF LITERATURE, MUKDEN.]

As the old capital of Manchuria and the abode of the Prince ancestors
of the family which was placed on the Chinese throne in 1644, it has
special privileges, among which are “Ministres de Parade,” nominally
holding the same rank as the actual ministers in Peking. Near it are
the superb tombs of the ancestors of the present Emperor, on which
grand avenues of trees converge, bordered by colossal stone animals
after the fashion of those at the Ming tombs near Peking. Formerly
the Manchu Emperors made pilgrimages to these tombs and the sacred
city of their dynasty, but since the second decade of this century the
Chinese Emperor’s portrait only has been sent at intervals in solemn
procession, the Peking road being in the meantime closed to ordinary
traffic.

The Governor-General of Manchuria resides in Mukden, as well as the
military Governor, who is assisted by a civil administrator and by the
Presidents of five Boards. The great offices of State are filled in
duplicate by Chinese and Manchus, and criminals of the two races are
tried in separate courts.

The favorable reception given to Christianity is one of the features
of Mukden. The fine pagoda of the Christian Church is _en évidence_
everywhere. The Scotch U.P. missionaries, who have been established
there for twenty-five years, are on friendly terms with the people, and
specially with many of the mandarins and high officials, who show them
tokens of regard publicly and privately on all occasions. Dr. Christie,
the medical missionary, is the trusted friend as well as the medical
adviser of many of the leading officials and their wives, who, with
every circumstance of ceremonial pomp, have presented complimentary
tablets to the hospital, and altogether the relations between the
Chinese and the missionaries are unique. I attribute these special
relations with the upper classes partly to the fact that Dr. Ross, the
senior missionary, and Dr. Christie, and those who have joined them
subsequently, have studied Chinese custom and etiquette very closely,
and are careful to conform to both as far as is possible, while they
are not only keen-sighted for the good that is in the Chinese, but
bring the best out of them.

Thus Christianity, divested of the nonchalant or contemptuous
insularity by which it is often rendered repulsive, has made
considerable progress not only in the capital but in the province,
and until the roads became unsafe there was scarcely a day during my
long visit in which there were not deputations from distant villages
asking for Christian workers, representing numerous bands of rural
worshippers, who, having received some knowledge of Christianity from
converts, colporteurs, or catechists, had renounced many idolatrous
practices, and desired further instruction. Of the “professing
Christians,” Dr. Ross said that it was only a very small percentage
who had heard the Gospel from Europeans! Four thousand were already
baptized, and nearly as many again were “inquirers” with a view to
baptism. It was most curious to see men coming daily from remote
regions asking for some one to go and instruct them in the “Jesus
doctrine,” for “they had learned as much as they could without
a teacher.” In many parts of Manchuria there are now Christian
communities carrying on their own worship and discipline, and it
is noteworthy that very many of the converts are members of those
Secret Societies whose strongest bond of union is the search after
righteousness.

The Mission Hospital is one of the largest and best equipped in the
Far East, and besides doing a great medical and surgical work, is a
medical school in which students pass through a four years’ curriculum.
There also Dr. Christie gives illustrated popular scientific lectures
in the winter, which are attended among others by a number of sons
of mandarins. Donations, both of money and food, are contributed to
this hospital both by officials and merchants; and General Tso, a
most charitable man and beloved by the poor, only the night before
he started for Korea, sent a bag of tickets for ice, so that the
hospital might not suffer for the lack of it during his absence.
Only a few months before he presented it with a handsome tablet and
subscription.[30]

Even in so civilized a city as Mukden, with its schools and literary
examinations, its thousands of literary aspirants to official position,
its streets full of a busy and splendid officialism, its enormous
trade, its banks and _yamens_, its 20,000 Mussulmans, with their many
mosques, and hatred of the pig, and the slow interpenetration of
enlightened Western ideas, Chinese superstitions of the usual order,
well-known by every reader, prevail.

The system of medicine, though it contains the knowledge and use of
some valuable native drugs among the sixty which are exported, is
in many respects extremely barbarous. The doctors have no operative
surgery and cannot even tie an artery! They use cupping, the cautery,
and acupuncture hot or cold, with long coarse uncleanly needles, with
which they pierce the liver, joints, and stomach for pains, sprains,
and rheumatism. They close all abscesses, wounds, and ulcers with a
black impervious plaster. Witch doctors are resorted to in cases of
hysteria or mental derangement. Vaccination is now to some extent
adopted with calf or transferred lymph, the puncture being made in the
nostrils. In order to ascertain whether a sick person is likely to
live, they plunge long needles into the body, and give up the case as
hopeless if blood does not flow. When death is near the friends dress
the patient in the best clothes they can afford and remove him from the
_kang_ (the usual elevated sleeping place) to the floor, or lay him on
ashes. As the spirit departs they cry loudly in the ear. In connection
with death, it may be mentioned that some of the most striking shops
in Mukden, after the coffin shops, are those in which are manufactured
and sold admirable lifesize representations of horses, men, asses,
elephants, carts, and all the articles of luxury of this life, which
are carried in procession and are burned at the grave, sometimes to the
value of $1,000.

Few children under nine years old are buried, and those only among the
richest class. When death occurs, the mother, wailing bitterly, wraps
the body in matting, and throws it away, _i.e._ she places it where the
dogs can get at it. This ghastly burden must not be carried out of a
door or window, but through a new or disused opening, in order that the
evil spirit which causes the disease may not enter. The belief is that
the Heavenly Dog which eats the sun at the time of an eclipse demands
the bodies of children, and that if they are denied to him he will
bring certain calamity on the household.

I have mentioned the _kang_, which is a marked feature of the houses
and inns of Manchuria, which for its latitude has the coldest winter in
the world, the mercury often reaching 17° F. below zero. The _kang_ is
a brick platform covered with matting and heated economically by flues,
and is at once sleeping and sitting place. The stalks of the _Holcus
Sorghum_ are used for fuel. In winter, when the external temperature
may be a little above and much below zero for a month at a time, the
Chinaman, unable to heat his whole room, drops his shoes, mounts his
_kang_, sits crosslegged on the warm mat, covers his padded socks with
his padded robe, and there takes his meals and receives his friends
in comfort. When I was invited to climb the _kang_ I felt myself a
_persona grata_.

The pawnshops of Mukden, with their high outer walls, lofty gateways,
two or three well-kept courts, fine buildings, and tall stone columns
at the outer gate, with the sign of the business upon them, their
scrupulous cleanliness, and their armies of polite, intelligent clerks,
are as respectable as banks with us. They demand for every sum borrowed
movable property to double its amount. If the pledge be not redeemed
within two years, it falls to the pawnbroker. Government fixes the
interest. The proprietor takes the same position as a capitalist owning
a bank in the West, and a _samshu_ distiller takes an equal place in
local esteem.

The prevalence of suicide is a feature of Mukden as of most Chinese
cities. Certain peculiarities of Chinese justice render it a favorite
way of wreaking spite upon an employer or neighbor, who is haunted
besides by the spirit of the self-murderer. Hence servants angry with
their masters, shopmen with their employers, wives with their husbands,
and above all, daughters-in-law with their mothers-in-law, show their
spite by dying on their premises, usually by opium, or eating the tops
of lucifer matches! It is quite a common thing for a person who has
a grudge against another to go and poison himself in his courtyard,
securing revenge first by the mandarin’s inquiry and next by the
haunting terrors of his malevolent spirit. Young girls were daily
poisoning themselves with lucifer matches to escape from the tyranny of
mothers-in-law and leave unpleasantness behind them.

But it is not the seamy side which is uppermost in Mukden.


FOOTNOTES:

[30] General Tso’s cavalry brigade was perhaps the best-disciplined in
the Chinese army, and he was a severe disciplinarian, but he was also
an earnest philanthropist, and though a strict Mussulman, always showed
himself friendly to the Christian religion, specially in its benevolent
aspects. His soup kitchens saved many a family from starvation. He
established and was the chief support of a foundling hospital. During
the terrible inundation of 1888 he distributed food among the famishing
with his own hands. His friendly help could always be relied on by the
missionaries, who joined in the sorrow with which Manchuria mourned for
his premature death at Phyöng-yang in Korea. The benevolence of rich
Chinese ought not to be overlooked. The charities of China are on a
gigantic scale, and many of them are admirably administered by men who
expend much self-sacrificing effort on their administration.




CHAPTER XVII

CHINESE TROOPS ON THE MARCH


The weeks which I spent in Mukden were full of rumors and excitement.
A few words on the origin of the war with Japan may make the situation
intelligible.

The Tong-haks, as was mentioned in chapter xiii., had on several
occasions defeated the Royal Korean troops, and after much hesitation
the Korean King invoked the help of China. China replied promptly by
giving Japan notice of her intention to send troops to Korea on 7th
June, 1894, both countries, under the treaty of Tientsin, having equal
rights to do so under such circumstances as had then arisen. On the
same day Japan announced to China a similar intention. The Chinese
General, Yi, landed at A-san with 3,000 men, and the Japanese occupied
Chemulpo and Seoul in force.

In the Chinese despatch Korea was twice referred to as “our tributary
state.” Japan replied that the Imperial Government had never recognized
Korea as a tributary state of China.

Then came three proposals from Japan for the administration of Korea,
to be carried out jointly by herself and China. These were--(1)
Examination of the financial administration; (2) Selection of the
central and local officials; (3) The establishment of a disciplined
army for national defence and the preservation of the peace of the land.

To these proposals China replied that Korea must be left to reform
herself, and that the withdrawal of the Japanese troops must precede
any negotiations, a suggestion rejected by Japan, who informed China
on 14th July, that she should regard the dispatch of any more troops
to Japan as a belligerent act. On 20th July Japan demanded that the
King of Korea should order the Chinese troops to leave the country,
threatening “decisive measures” if this course were not adopted.

Meanwhile, at the request of the King, the representatives of the
Treaty Powers were endeavoring to maintain peace, suggesting the
simultaneous withdrawal of the troops of both countries. To this China
agreed, but Japan demanded delay, and on 23rd July took the “decisive
measure” she had threatened, assaulted and captured the Palace, and
practically made the King a prisoner, his father, the Tai-Won-Kun, at
his request, but undoubtedly at Japanese instigation, taking nominally
the helm of affairs.

After this events marched with great rapidity. On 25th July the
transport _Kowshing_, flying the British flag and carrying 1,200
Chinese troops, was sunk with great loss of life by the Japanese
cruiser _Naniwa_, and four days later the Japanese won the battle of
A-san and dispersed the Chinese army. Before 30th July Korea gave
notice of the renunciation of the Conventions between herself and
China, which was equivalent to renouncing Chinese sovereignty. On 1st
August war was declared. Of the sequence of these events, and even of
the events themselves, we knew little or nothing, and up to the middle
of July Mukden kept “the even tenor of its way.”

Manchuria is far less hostile to foreigners than the rest of China, and
the name “devil” may even be used as a polite address with the prefix
of “honorable”! No European women had previously passed through the
gate of the inner wall and through the city on foot, but I not only was
able to do so without molestation, though several times only attended
by my servant, but actually was able to photograph in the quieter
streets, the curiosity of the crowd being quite friendly. The Scotch
missionaries had then been established in Mukden for twenty-two years,
were on very friendly terms with the people, there was much social
intercourse, and altogether their relations with the Chinese were
unique.

Before the end of July, however, the many wild rumors which were
afloat, and the continual passage of troops on their way to Korea
(war being a foregone conclusion before it was declared), produced a
general ferment. I had to abandon peregrinations in the city, and also
photography, a hostile crowd having mobbed me as I was “taking” the
Gate of Victory, in the belief that I kept a black devil in the camera,
with such a baleful Cyclopean eye that whatever living thing it looked
on would die within a year, and any building or wall would crumble away!

After war was declared on 1st August, 1894, things grew worse rapidly.
As Japan had full command of the sea, all Chinese troops sent to Korea
were compelled to march through Manchuria, and undisciplined hordes
of Manchu soldiers from Kirin, Tsitsihar, and other northern cities
poured through Mukden at the rate of 1,000 a day, having distinguished
themselves on the southern march by seizing on whatever they could
get hold of, riotously occupying inns without payment, beating the
innkeepers, and wrecking Christian chapels, not from anti-Christian but
from anti-foreign feeling. Their hatred of foreigners culminated at
Liau-yang, 40 miles from Mukden, when Manchu soldiers, after wrecking
the Christian chapel, beat Mr. Wylie, a Scotch missionary, to death,
and attacked the chief magistrate for his friendliness to the “foreign
devils.”

Anti-foreign feeling rose rapidly in Mukden. The servants of
foreigners, and even the hospital assistants, were insulted in the
town, and the wildest rumors concerning foreigners were spread and
believed. The friendly authorities, who took the safety of the three
mission families into serious consideration, requested them to
give up their usual journeys into the interior, and to avoid going
into the city or outside the walls. Next the “street chapels” were
closed, the native Christians, a large body, being very apprehensive
for their own safety, being regarded as “one with the foreigners,”
who, unfortunately, were generally supposed to be “the same as the
Japanese.”

[Illustration: GATE OF VICTORY, MUKDEN.]

The perils of the roads increased. Not a cart or animal was to be seen
near them. The great inns were closed or had their shutters wrecked,
and the villages and farms were deserted. All tracks converging on
Mukden were thronged with troops, not marching, but straggling along
anyhow, every tenth man carrying a great silk banner, but few were
armed with modern weapons. I saw several regiments of fine physique
without a rifle among them! In some, gingalls were carried by two men
each, others were armed with antique muzzle-loading muskets, very
rusty, or with long matchlocks, and some carried only spears, or
bayonets fixed on red poles. All were equipped with such umbrellas
and fans as I saw some time later in the ditches of the bloody field
of Phyöng-yang. It was nothing but murder to send thousands of men so
armed to meet the Japanese with their deadly Murata rifles, and the
men knew it, for when they happened to see a foreigner they made such
remarks as, “This is one of the devils for whom we are going to be
shot,” and when a large party of them, in attempting to make a forcible
entry into the Governor-General’s palace, were threatened by the guard
with being shot, the reply was, “We are going to be shot in Korea, we
may as well be shot here.”

The nominal pay of soldiers is higher than that of laborers, and it was
only after the defeat and the great slaughter at A-san that there was
any unwillingness to enter the ranks. The uniform is easy, but unfit
for hard wear, and very stagey--a short, loose, sleeved red cloak,
bordered with black velvet, loose blue, black, or apricot trousers, and
long boots of black cotton cloth with thick soles of quilted rag. The
discipline may be inferred from the fact that some regiments of fine
physique straggled through Mukden for the seat of war carrying rusty
muskets in one hand, and in the other poles with perches, on which
singing birds were loosely tethered! The men fell out of the ranks
as they pleased, to buy fruit or tobacco or to speak to friends. Yet
they made a goodly scenic display in their brilliant coloring, with
their countless long banners of crimson silk undulating in the breezy
sunshine, and their officers with sable-tailed hats and yellow jackets
riding beside them.

Those who had rifles and modern weapons at all had them of all makes;
so cartridges of twenty different sorts and sizes were huddled together
without any attempt at classification, and in one open space all sorts
were heaped on the ground, and the soldiers were fitting them to their
arms, sometimes trying eight or ten before finding one to suit the
weapon, and throwing them back on the heap! There were neither medical
arrangements nor an ambulance corps, Chinese custom being to strip the
wounded and leave them, “wounded men being of no use.” The commissariat
was not only totally inefficient but grossly dishonest, and where
stores had accumulated the contractors sold them for their own benefit.
Thus there was little provision of food or fodder in advance, and in
a very short time the soldiers were robbing at large, and eating the
horses and transport mules. The Chinese soldiers, bad as their drill
and discipline are, are regarded by European officers as “excellent
material,” but the Manchus of the North (Tartars) are a shambling,
disorderly, insubordinate horde, dreaded by peaceable citizens,
presuming on their Imperial relationship, and in disturbed times little
better than licensed brigands.

Among the first troops to leave the city was the Fengtien Chinese
brigade of cavalry 5,000 strong, under General Tso, a brave and
experienced officer, who was at once feared and trusted, so that
when he fell with his face to the foe at Phyöng-yang, his loss
demoralized the army, and the Japanese showed their appreciation of
him by erecting an obelisk to his memory. His brigade was in a state
of strict discipline, admirably drilled, and on the whole well armed.
The troopers were mounted on active, well-built ponies, a little over
13 hands high, up to great weight. After leaving Mukden they were
entangled in a quagmire which extended for 100 miles, and the
telegrams of disaster were ominous. On the first day their commander
beheaded six men for taking melons without payment, and on the second
fourteen were decapitated for desertion.

[Illustration: CHINESE SOLDIERS]

After General Tso’s departure with his disciplined force the disorder
increased, and the high officials, being left with few reliable
soldiers, became alarmed for their own positions, the hatred and
jealousy between the Chinese and Manchu troops not only constituting
one of the great difficulties of the war, but threatening official
safety.

Rumors of disaster soon began to circulate, and with each one the
ferment increased, and an Imperial proclamation sent by courier from
Peking in the interests of foreigners, declaring that the Emperor was
only at war with the “rebel _wojen_” (dwarfs), and was at peace with
all other nations, did little to allay it. The able-bodied beggars
and unemployed coolies in the city were swept into the army, and were
sent off after three weeks’ drill. The mule carts of Mukden and the
neighborhood were requisitioned for transport, paralyzing much of the
trade of the city. Later, many of these carts were burned as fuel to
cook the mules for the starving troops. As Manchu soldiers continued
to pour in, the shops were closed and the streets deserted at their
approach, and many of the merchants fled to the hills. A Japanese
occupation, ensuring security and order, came to be hoped for by many
sufferers. The price of provisions rose, because the country people had
either been robbed of all or did not dare to bring them in, and even
the hospital and dispensary for the same reason began to be scantily
attended. After Mr. Wylie’s murder, things became increasingly serious,
and by the end of August it became apparent to the authorities that the
safety of foreigners would be jeopardized by remaining much longer in
Mukden. Somewhat later they left, Dr. Ross and Dr. Christie remaining
behind for a short time at the special request of the Governor. I
left on 20th August, and though my friends were very anxious about
my safety, I reached Newchwang five days later, having encountered no
worse risk than that of an attack by pirates, who captured some junks
with some loss of life, after I had eluded them by travelling at night.




CHAPTER XVIII

NAGASAKI--WLADIVOSTOK


After the collapse of the rumor regarding the landing of the Japanese
in force on the shores of the Gulf of Pechili, which obtained credence
for nearly a fortnight in the Far East, fluttered every Cabinet in
Europe, forced even so cool and well-informed a man as Sir Robert Hart
into hasty action, and produced a hurried exodus of Europeans from
Peking and a scare generally among the foreign residents in North
China, I returned from Peking to Chefoo to await the course of events.

The war, its requirements, and its uncertainties disarranged the
means of ocean transit so effectually that, after hanging on for some
weeks, in the midst of daily rumors of great naval engagements, for
a steamer for Wladivostok, I only succeeded in getting a passage in
a small German boat which reluctantly carried one passenger, and in
which I spent a very comfortless five days, in stormy weather, varied
by the pleasant interlude of a day at Nagasaki, then in the full glory
of the chrysanthemum season, and aflame with scarlet maples. Lighted,
cleaned, and policed to perfection, without a hole or a heap, this trim
city of dwarfs and dolls contrasts agreeably with the filth, squalor,
loathsomeness, and general abominableness which are found in nearly all
Chinese cities outside the foreign settlements.

Chinese moved about the streets with an air as of a ruling race,
and worked at their trades and pursued the important calling of
_compradores_ with perfect freedom from annoyance, the only formality
required of them being registration; while from China all the Japanese
had fled by the desire of their consuls, not always unmolested in
person and property, and any stray “dwarf” then found in a Chinese city
would have been all but certain to lose his life.

The enthusiasm for the war was still at a white heat. Gifts in money
and kind fell in a continual shower on the Nagasaki authorities,
nothing was talked of but military successes, and a theatre holding
3,000 was giving the profits of two daily performances to crowded
audiences in aid of the War Fund. The fact that ships were only allowed
to enter the port by daylight, and were then piloted by a Government
steam-launch in charge of a “torpedo pilot,” was the only indication in
the harbor of an exceptional state of things.

It was warm autumn weather at Nagasaki, but when I reached Wladivostok
the hills which surround its superb harbor were powdered with the first
snows of winter, and a snowstorm two days later covered the country to
a depth of 18 inches. Wooded islands, wooded bays, wooded hills, deep
sheltered channels and inlets, wooded to the water’s edge, bewilder a
stranger, then comes Fort Godobin, and by a sharp turn the harbor is
entered, one of the finest in the world, two and a half miles long by
nearly one wide, with deep water everywhere, so deep that ships drawing
25 feet lie within a stone’s throw of the wharves, and moor at the
Government pier.

The first view of Wladivostok (“Possession of the East”) is very
striking, although the vandalism of its builders has deprived it
of its naturally artistic background of wood. Otherwise the purple
tone of the land and the blue crystal of the water reminded me of
some of our Nova Scotian harbors. There is nothing Asiatic about the
aspect of this Pacific capital, and indeed it is rather Transatlantic
than European. Seated on a deeply embayed and apparently landlocked
harbor, along the shores of which it straggles for more than 3 miles,
climbing audaciously up the barren sides of denuded hills, irregular,
treeless-lofty buildings with bold fronts, Government House, “Kuntz
and Albers,” the glittering domes of a Greek cathedral, a Lutheran
church, Government Administrative Offices, the Admiralty, the Arsenal,
the Cadet School, the Naval Club, an Emigrant Home, and the grand and
solid terminus and offices of the Siberian Railway, rising out of an
irregularity which is not picturesque, attract and hold the voyager’s
attention.

[Illustration: WLADIVOSTOK.]

Requesting to be taken at once to the Customs, the bewildered air of
astonishment with which my request was met informed me that Wladivostok
had up to that time been a free port, and that I was at liberty to
land unquestioned. After thumping about for some time among a number
of stout _sampans_ in the midst of an unspeakable Babel, I was hauled
on shore by a number of laughing, shouting, dirty Korean youths, who,
after exchanging pretty hard blows with each other for my coveted
possessions, shouldered them and ran off with them in different
directions, leaving me stranded with the tripod of my camera, to which
I had clung desperately in the _mêlée_. There were droskies not far
off, and four or five Koreans got hold of me, one dragging me towards
one vehicle, others to another, yelling Korean into my ears, till a
Cossack policeman came and thumped them into order. There were hundreds
of them on the wharf, and except that they were noisier and more
aggressive, it was like landing at Chemulpo. Getting into a drosky, I
said, “Golden Horn Hotel,” in my most distinct English, then “Hôtel
Corne d’or,” in my most distinct French. The _moujik_ nodded and
grinned out of his fur hood, and started at a gallop in the opposite
direction! I clutched him, and made emphatic signs, speech being
useless, and he turned and galloped in a right direction, but stopped
at the disreputable doorway of one of the lowest of the many drinking
saloons with which Wladivostok is infested.

There all my Koreans reappeared, vociferating and excited. I started
the _moujik_ off again at a gallop, the drosky jumping ruts and
bounding out of holes with an energy of elasticity which took my
breath away, the Koreans racing. More gallops, more stoppages at
pothouses, and in this fashion I reached at last the Golded Horn
Hotel--a long, rambling, “disjaskit” building, with a shady air of
disreputableness hanging about it,--the escort of Koreans still
good-natured and vociferous. The landlady emerged. I tried her in
English and French, but she knew neither. The _moujik_ shouted at us
both in Russian, a little crowd assembled, each man trying to put
matters straight, and when every moment made them more entangled, and
the _moujik_ was gathering up his reins to gallop off on a further
quest, a Russian officer came up, and in excellent English asked if he
could help me, interpreted my needs to the lady, lent me some _kopecks_
with which to appease the Koreans and the _moujik_, and gave me the
enjoyment of listening to my own blessed tongue, which I had not heard
for five days.

By a long flight of stairs, past a great bar and dining-room,
where _vodka_ was much _en evidence_, even in the forenoon, past a
billiard-room, occupied even at that early hour, and through a large,
dark, and dusty theatre, I attained my rooms, a “parlor” and bedroom
_en suite_, opening on and looking out upon a yard with pigsties. There
were five doors, not one of which would lock. The rooms were furnished
in Louis Quatorze style, much gilding and velvet, all ancient and
dusty. They looked as if they had known tragedies, and might know them
again. The barrier of language was impassable, and I must be unskilled
in the use of signs, for I quite failed to make any one understand that
I wanted food.

I went out, cashed a circular note at the great German house of
Kuntz and Albers, the “Whiteleys” of Eastern Siberia, where all the
information that I then needed was given in the most polite way, found
it impossible anywhere else to make myself understood in English or
French, failed in an attempt to buy postage stamps or to get food,
delivered the single letter of introduction which I had somewhat
ungraciously accepted, and returned to my melodramatic domicile to
consider the possibilities of travel, which at that moment were not
encouraging.

Before long Mr. Charles Smith, the oldest foreign resident in
Wladivostok, to whom my letter was addressed, called, a kindly and
genial presence, and, as I afterwards found, full of good deeds and
benevolence. He took me at once to call on General Unterberger, the
Governor of the Maritime Province. I think I never saw so gigantic a
man--military, too, from his spurs to his coat collar. As he rose to
receive me he looked as if his head might eventually touch the lofty
ceiling.

Mr. Smith is a _persona grata_ in Wladivostok, and very much so with
the Governor, who consequently received me with much friendliness,
and asked me to let him know my plans. I explained what I wanted to
do, subject to his approval, and presented my credentials, which
were of the best. He said that he quite approved of my project, and
would do anything he could to help me, and wrote on the spot a letter
to the Frontier Commissioner, but he added that the disorganized
and undisciplined state of the Chinese army near the frontier might
render some modification of my plan necessary, as I afterwards found.
The Governor and his wife speak excellent English, and the social
intercourse which I had with them afterwards was most agreeable and
instructive.

During the afternoon Mr. Smith returned, and saying that he and his
wife could not endure my staying in that hotel, took me away to his
home high up on a steep hillside, with a glorious view of the city
and harbor, and of which it is difficult to say whether the sunshine
were brighter within or without. Under such propitious circumstances
my two visits became full of sunny memories, and I may be pardoned if
I see Wladivostok a little _couleur de rose_; for the extraordinary
kindness which dogs and shadows the traveller in the Far East were met
with there in perfection, and where I was received by strangers I left
highly valued friends.

After a snowstorm splendid weather set in. The snow prevented dust
blasts, the ordinary drawback of an Eastern Siberian winter, the skies
were brilliant and unclouded, the sunsets carnivals of color, the air
exhilarating, the mercury at night averaging 20°, there was light
without heat, the main road was full of sleighs going at a gallop,
their bells making low music, all that is unsightly was hidden, and
this weather continued for five weeks!

“The Possession of the East” is nothing if not military and naval.
Forts, earthworks, at which it is prudent not to look too long or
intently, great military hospitals, huge red brick barracks in every
direction, offices of military administration, squads of soldiers in
brown ulsters and peaked _pashaliks_, carrying pickaxes or spades
on their shoulders,[31] sappers with their tools, in small parties,
officers, mostly with portfolios or despatch boxes under their arms,
dashing about in sleighs, and the prohibition of photography, all
indicate its fortress character. Certainly two out of every three
people in the streets are in uniform, and the Cossack police, who
abound, are practically soldiers.

Naval it is also. There are ships of war in and out of commission, a
brand-new admiralty, a navy yard, a floating dock, a magnificent dry
dock, only just completed, and a naval clubhouse, which is one of the
finest buildings in Wladivostok. No matter that Nature closes the
harbor from Christmas to the end of March! Science has won the victory,
and the port has been kept open for the last two winters by means
of a powerful ice-breaker and the services of the troops in towing
the blocks of ice out to sea. Large steamers of the “Volunteer Fleet”
leave Odessa and Wladivostok monthly or fortnightly. As the eastern
terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway, Wladivostok aspires to be what
she surely will be--at once the Gibraltar and Odessa of the Far East,
one of the most important of commercial emporiums, as the “distributing
point” for the commerce of that vast area of prolific country which
lies south of the Amur. Possibly a branch line to Port Shestakoff in
Ham-gyöng Do may enable the Government to dispense with the services of
the ice-breaker!

The progress of the city is remarkable. The site, then a forest, was
only surveyed in 1860. In 1863 many of the trees were felled and some
shanties were erected. Later than that a tiger was shot on the site
of the new Government House, and a man leaving two horses to be shod
outside the smithy had them both devoured by tigers. Gradually the big
oaks and pines were cleared away, and wooden houses were slowly added,
until 1872, when the removal of the naval establishment of 60 men from
Nicolaeffk on the Amur to the new settlement gave it a decided start.
In 1878 it had a population of 1,400. In 1897 its estimated civil
population was 25,000, including 3,000 Koreans, who have their own
settlement a mile from the city, and are its draymen and porters, and
2,000 Chinese. The latter keep most of the shops, and have obtained
a monopoly of the business in meat, fish, game, fruit, vegetables,
and other perishable commodities, their guild being strong enough to
squeeze the Russians out of the trade in these articles, which are sold
in four large wooden buildings by the harbor known as the “Bazar.”
There are some good Japanese shops, but the Japanese are usually
domestic servants at high wages, and after a few years return to enjoy
their savings in their own country. A naturalized German is the only
British subject, and my host and his family are the only Americans.

The capital has two subsidized and two independent lines of steamers,
700 families of Russian assisted emigrants enter Primorsk annually,
each head of a household being required to be the possessor of 600
roubles (£60), and from 8,000 to 10,000 Chinese from the Shan-tung
province arrive every spring to fulfil labor contracts, returning to
China in December, carrying out of the country from 25 to 50 dollars
each, convict labor from the penal settlement of Saghalien having been
abandoned as impracticable.

The Chinese shops, which are a feature of Wladivostok, undersell both
Russians and Germans, and have an increasing trade. Kuntz and Albers, a
Hamburg firm of importers, bankers, shipping agents, and Whiteleyism in
general, with sixty clerks, mostly German, with a few Russians, Danes,
and Koreans, conduct an enormous wholesale and retail business in a
“palatial” pile of brick and stone buildings, and has sixteen branch
houses in Eastern Siberia, and the German firm of Langalutje runs them
very closely.

The railway station and offices are solid and handsome; an admirably
built railroad, open to the Ussuri Bridge, 186 miles, and progressing
towards the Amur with great rapidity, points to a new commercial
future; streets of shops and dwelling-houses, in which brick and stone
are fast replacing wood, are extending to the north, east, and west,
and along the Gulf of Peter the Great, for fully three miles; and new
and handsome official and private edifices of much pretension were
being rapidly completed. One broad road, with houses sometimes on
one, sometimes on both sides, running along the hillside for 2 miles
at a considerable height, is the “Main Street” or “High Street” of
Wladivostok. Along it are built most of the public buildings, and the
great shops and mercantile offices. It is crossed by painfully steep
roads climbing up the hill and descending with equal steepness to the
sea. There are two or three parallel roads of small importance.

The builder was at work in all quarters, and the clink of the mason’s
trowel and the ring of the carpenter’s hammer were only silent for a
few hours during the night. Several of Government buildings were barely
finished, and were occupied before they were painted and stuccoed.
Building up and pulling down were going on simultaneously. Roads were
being graded, culverts and retaining walls built, and wooden houses
showed signs of disappearing from the principal thoroughfare. There
was a “boom” in real property. The value of land has risen fabulously.
“Lots” which were bought in 1864 for 600 and 3,000 roubles are now
worth 12,000 and 20,000, and in the centre of the town land is not to
be bought at any price.

Newness, progress, hopefulness are characteristics of civil
Wladivostok. It has the aspect of a growing city in the American Far
West. Few things are finished and all are going ahead. The sidewalks
are mostly narrow, and composed of rough planks, with a tendency to
tip up or down, but here and there is a fine piece of granite flagging
10 feet wide. The hotels have more of the shady character of “saloons”
or barrooms than of anything reputable or established. Handsome houses
of brick and stone shoulder wooden shanties. Fashionable carriages or
sleighs bounce over ungraded streets. The antediluvian ox-cart with its
Korean driver bumps and creaks through the streets alongside of the
_troika_, with its three galloping horses in showy harness, and its
occupants in the latest and daintiest of Parisian costumes.

But the all-pervading flavor of militarism overpowers the suggestion
of the American Far West. The first buildings on the barren coast are
military hospitals and barracks, and barracks thicken as the city is
approached. The female element is in a remarkable minority. The dull
roll of artillery and commissariat wagons, the tramp, morning and
night, of brown battalions, and the continual throb of drum and blare
of trumpet and bugle, recall one to the fact that this is the capital
of Russia’s vast, growing, aspiring, Pacific Empire.

Theatricals, concerts, and balls fill up the winter season. Except
on the few days on which snow falls, the skies are cloudless, the
temperature is not seriously below zero, and the dryness of the air is
very invigorating. In winters, happily somewhat exceptional, in which
there is no snowfall, and the strong winds create dust-storms, the
climate is less agreeable. Spring is abrupt and pleasant, and autumn is
a fine season, but summer is hot, damp, and misty.

A fine Greek cathedral, with many domes and lofty gilded crosses, which
gleam mysteriously in the sunset when the gloom of twilight has wrapped
all else, a prominent Lutheran church, and a Chinese joss-house,
provide for the religious needs of the population. The Governor of
the Maritime Province, several of the leading, and many of the lower
officials are of German origin from the Baltic provinces, Lutherans,
and possibly imbued with a few liberal ideas. But among the kindly,
cultured, and agreeable people whose acquaintance I made in Wladivostok
one peculiarity impressed me forcibly--the absolute stagnation of
thought, or the expression of it, on politics and all matters connected
with them, the administration of government, religion, the orthodox
church, dissent, home and foreign policy, etc. It is true that
certain subjects, and these among the most interesting, are carefully
eliminated from conversation, and that to introduce any one of them
might subject the offender to social ostracism.


FOOTNOTES:

[31] The Russian soldier does a great amount of day labor. Far from
disporting himself in brilliant uniform before the admiring eyes of
boys and “servant girls,” he digs, builds, carpenters, makes shoes and
harness, and does a good civil day’s work in addition to his military
duties, and is paid for this as “piecework” on a fixed scale, his
daily earnings being duly entered in a book. When he has served his
time these are handed over to him, and a steady, industrious man makes
enough to set himself up in a small business or on a farm. _Vodka_ and
_schnaps_ are the Russian soldier’s great enemies.




CHAPTER XIX

KOREAN SETTLERS IN SIBERIA


The chief object of my visit to Russian Manchuria was to settle for
myself by personal investigation the vexed question of the condition of
those Koreans who have found shelter under the Russian flag, a number
estimated in Seoul at 20,000. It was there persistently said that
Russia was banishing them in large numbers, and that several thousands
of them had already recrossed the Tu-men, and were in such poverty that
the King of Korea had sent agents to the north who were to settle them
on lands in Ham-gyöng Do.

But in Wladivostok the servant-interpreter difficulty was absolutely
insurmountable. No efforts on the part of my friends could obtain
what did not exist, and I was on the verge of giving up what proved a
very interesting journey, when the Director of the Siberian Telegraph
Lines very kindly liberated the senior official in his department, who
had not had a holiday for many years, to go with me. Mr. Heidemann, a
German from the Baltic provinces, spoke German, Russian, and English
with nearly equal ease, and as a Russian official was able to make
things smoother than they might otherwise have been in a very rough
part of Primorsk. He was tall, good-looking, and verging on middle
age, very gentlemanly, never failed in any courtesy, understood how to
manage _moujiks_, and was a capable and willing interpreter; but he was
official, reticent, and uninterested, and gave me the impression of
being frozen into his uniform!

Fortified as to my project by the cordial approval of the Governor,
the courtesy of the Telegraph Department, and the singular splendor of
the weather, I left Wladivostok by a red sunrise in a small steamer,
which accomplished the 60 miles to Possiet Bay in seven hours, landing
us in a deep inlet of clear water and white sand, soon to be closed by
ice, at the foot of low and absolutely barren hills fringing off into
sandy knolls, where Koreans with their ox-carts awaited the steamer. A
well spread tea-table at the house of the Russian postmaster was very
welcome. Such a strong-looking family I had seldom seen, but afterwards
I found that size and strength are characteristic of the Russian
settlers in Primorsk.

Possiet Bay is a large military station of fine barracks and
storehouses. It scarcely seemed to possess a civil population, but
there are Korean settlements at no great distance, from which much of
the beef supply of Wladivostok is derived. We met a number of strong,
thriving-looking Koreans driving 60 fine fat cattle down to the steamer.

The post wagon, in which we were cramped up among and under the
mail-bags, took us at a two hours’ gallop along frozen inlets of the
sea and across frozen rivers, over grassy, hilly country, scarcely
enlivened by Korean farms in the valleys, to Nowo Kiewsk, which
we reached after nightfall, and were hospitably received by the
representative of Messrs. Kuntz and Albers, whose large brick and stone
establishment is the prominent object in the settlement.

Nowo Kiewsk is a great military post, to which 1,000 civilians, chiefly
Koreans and Chinese, have been attracted by the prospect of gain.
Koreans indeed form the bulk of this population, and do all the hauling
of goods and fuel with their ox-teams. The centre of the town is a
great dusty slope intersected by dusty and glaring roads, which resound
at intervals from early morning till sunset with the steady tramp of
brown-ulstered battalions. Between Possiet Bay and Nowo Kiewsk there
were 10,000 infantry and artillery, and at the latter post 8 pieces of
field artillery and 24 two-wheeled ammunition wagons. Barracks for
10,000 more men were in course of rapid construction. Long wooden sheds
shelter the artillery ponies, and villages of low mud-houses of two
rooms each, with windows consisting of a single small pane of glass,
the families of soldiers. There are great drill and parade grounds and
an imposing Greek church of the usual pattern.

With its great open spaces and wide streets, Nowo Kiewsk looks laid out
for futurity, straggling along a treeless and bushless hill slope for
2 miles. In addition to Kuntz and Albers, with their polyglot staff of
clerks, among whom a young Korean in European dress was conspicuous for
his gentlemanliness and alacrity, there is another German house, and
there are forty small shops, chiefly kept by Chinese, at all of which
_schnaps_ and _vodka_ are sold.

I was detained there for three days while arrangements for my southern
journey were being made, and during that time the Chief of Police, who
spoke French, took me to several Korean villages. So far as I saw and
heard, the whole agricultural population of the neighborhood is Korean,
and is in a very prosperous condition. There, and down to the Korean
frontier, most of these settlers are doing well, and some of them are
growing rich as contractors for the supply of meat and grain to the
Russian forces. At this they have beaten their Chinese neighbors, and
they actually go into Chinese Manchuria, buy up lean cattle, and fatten
them for beef. To those who have only seen the Koreans in Korea, such a
statement will be hardly credible. Yet it does not stand alone, for I
have it on the best authority that the Korean settlers near Khabaroffka
have competed so successfully with the Chinese in market gardening that
the supplying that city with vegetables is now entirely in their hands!

The Russian _tarantass_ is one of the most uncouth of civilized
vehicles--all that can be said of it is that it suits the roads, which
in that region are execrable. On two sets of stout wheels and axles,
attached to each other by long solid timbers, a long shallow box is
secured, with one, two, or even three boards, cushioned or not, “roped”
across it for seats. It may be drawn by either two or three horses
abreast, one in the shafts and one or two outside, each with the most
slender attachment to the vehicle, and his head held down and inwards
by a tight strap. This outer animal is trained to a showy gallop, which
never slackens even though the shaft horse may keep up a decorous trot.
The _tarantass_ has no springs, and, going at a gallop, bumps and
bounces over all obstacles, holes, hillocks, ruts and streams being
alike to it.

The _tarantass_ of the Chief of Police made nothing of the obstacles on
the road to Yantchihe, where we were to hear of a Korean interpreter.
The level country, narrowing into a valley bordered by fine mountains,
is of deep, rich black soil, and grows almost all cereals and roots.
All the crops were gathered in and the land was neatly ploughed. Korean
hamlets with houses of a very superior class to those in Korea were
sprinkled over the country. At one of the largest villages, where 140
families were settled on 750 acres of rich land, we called at several
of the peasant farmers’ houses, and were made very welcome, even
the women coming out to welcome the official with an air of decided
pleasure. The farmers had changed the timid, suspicious, or cringing
manner which is characteristic of them to a great extent at home, for
an air of frankness and manly independence which was most pleasing.

The Chief of Police was a welcome visitor. The Koreans had nothing
to fear, unless his quick scent discerned an insanitary odor or his
eye an unwarrantable garbage heap! The farmyards were clean and well
swept, and the domestic animals were lodged in neat sheds. The houses,
of strictly Korean architecture, were large, with five or six rooms,
carefully thatched, and very neat within, abounding in such comforts
and plenishings as would only be dreamed of by mandarins at home. It
is insisted on, however, that, instead of the flues which heat the
floors vomiting forth their smoke through many blackened apertures in
the walls, they shall unite in sending it heavenwards through a hollow
tree trunk placed at a short distance from the house. This, and cleanly
surroundings in the interests of sanitation, are the only restrictions
on their Korean habits. The clothing and dwellings are the same as in
Korea, and the “topknot” flourishes.

A little farther on there is the large village of Yantchihe, with
a neat schoolhouse, in which Russian and Korean pupils sit side by
side at their lessons, a Greek church, singularly rich in internal
decorations, and a priest’s house adjoining. This is a very prosperous
village. In the neat police station a Korean sergeant wrote down my
requirements and sent off a smart Korean policeman in search of an
interpreter. Four hundred Koreans in this neighborhood have conformed
to the Greek Church and have received baptism. On asking the priest,
who was more picturesque than cultivated, and whose large young family
seemed oppressively large for the house, what sort of Christians they
made, he replied suggestively that they had “a great deal to learn,”
and that there would be “more hope for the next generation.”

I am not clear in my own mind as to the cause of the success which has
attended “missionary effort” at Yantchihe and elsewhere. The statements
I received on the subject differed widely, and in most cases were made
hesitatingly, as if my informants were not sure of their ground. My
impression is that while Russia is tolerant of devil-worship, or any
other worship which is not subversive of the externals of morality,
“conformity” is required to obtain for the Korean alien those blessings
which belong to naturalization as a Russian subject.

Preparations being completed for travelling to the Korean frontier,
and into Korea as far as Kyöng-heung, a town which a Trade Convention
in 1888 opened to the residence of Russian subjects in the hope
of creating a market there after the style of Kiachta, I had an
interview with Mr. Matunin, the Frontier Commissioner, who gave me
a very unpleasant account of insecurity on the frontier owing to the
lawlessness of the Chinese troops, and an introduction to the Governor
of Kyöng-heung.

A large _tarantass_ with three ponies and a driver, a Korean on another
pony, and the Korean headman of a neighboring village, who spoke
Russian well, and our saddles were our modest outfit. The details of
the two days’ journey to the Tu-men are too monotonous for infliction
on the reader. The road was infamous, and at times disappeared
altogether on a hillside or in a swamp, and swamps are frequent for
the first 40 _versts_. The _tarantass_, always attempting a gallop,
bounced, bumped, and thumped, till breathing became a series of gasps.
Occasionally we stuck fast in swampy streams where the ice was broken,
being extricated by a tremendous, united, and apparently trained, jump
on the part of the ponies, which compelled a strong grip of the vehicle
with hands and feet, and would have dislocated any other. Mr. Heidemann
smoked cigarettes unceasingly, and made no remarks.

We crossed the head of Possiet Bay and other inlets at a gallop on
thin ice, forded several streams in the aforesaid fashion, and passed
through several Korean coast villages given up to the making of salt by
a rude process, the finished product being carted away to Hun-chun in
China in baskets of finely woven reeds. These Chinese carts are drawn
by seven mules each, constantly driven at a gallop.

After 30 _versts_ the country became very hilly, with rugged mountains
in the distance, all without a tree or bush, and covered with coarse
and fine grasses mixed up with myriads of withered flower stalks of
_Compositæ_ and _Umbelliferæ_, and here and there a lonely, belated
purple aster shivered in the strong keen wind, which made an atmosphere
at zero somewhat hard to face. The valleys are flat and broad, and
their rich black soil, the product of ages of decaying vegetation, is
absolutely stoneless. Almost all crops can be raised upon it. Besides
being a rich agricultural country, the region is well suited for cattle
breeding. There were large herds on the hills, and haystacks thickly
scattered over the landscape indicated abundance of winter keep. The
potato, which flourishes and is free from the disease, is largely
cultivated, and is now with the Koreans an article of ordinary diet.

The whole of this fine country is settled by Koreans, for the few
hamlets of wretched, tumble-down Chinese houses are of no account.
Whether as squatters or purchasers, they are making the best of the
land. The number of their domestic animals enables them to fertilize
it abundantly; they plough deep, and rotate their crops, and get a
splendid yield from their lands. We halted at Saretchje, a village
of 120 families, admirably housed, and with all material comforts
abounding about them. Out of its 600 inhabitants, 450 have “conformed.”
The Koreans, having no religion, are apparently not unwilling to
secure the possible advantages of conversion, and though none of the
Greek priests who conversed with me were enthusiastic about their
“consistency,” it is at least more satisfactory to see an “_Ecce Homo_”
on the wall than the family dæmon.

At distances of 3 and 4 miles there are Korean villages, of which
prosperity in greater or less degree is a characteristic. The houses
are large and well-built, and the farmyards are well stocked with
domestic animals, the people and children are well clothed, and the
village lands carefully cultivated.

A long ascent, during which the road, which for some time had been
intermittent, gradually disappeared, leads to the summit of a high
hill, from which the mountainous frontiers of Russia, China, and Korea
are seen to converge. After losing our way and our time, and crossing
several ranges of hills without a road, just as the winter sun was
setting in a flood of red gold, glorifying the mountains on the Chinese
frontier, a turn round a bluff revealed what is geographically and
politically a striking view.

The whole of the Russo-Korean frontier, 11 miles in length, and a
broad river full of sandbanks, passing through a desert of sandhills
to the steely blue ocean, lay crimson in the sunset. On a steep bluff
above the river a tall granite slab marks the spot where the Russian
and Chinese frontiers meet. Across the Tu-men, the barren mountains of
Korea loomed purple through a haze of gold. Three empires are seen at a
glance. A small and poor Korean village is situated in a valley below.
Close to the Boundary Stone, on the high steep bluff above the Tu-men,
there is a large mud hut from which most of the whitewash had scaled
off, with thatch held on by straw ropes, weighted with stones.

It was a very lonely scene. A Korean told us that it was absolutely
impossible for us to sleep at the village. A Cossack came out of the
hut, took a long look at us, and returned. Then a forlorn-looking
corporal appeared, who also took a long look, and having hospitable
instincts, came up and told us that the village was impossible except
for the drivers and horses, but that he could put us up roughly in the
hut, which consisted of one fair sized room, another very small one,
and a lean-to.

The latest English papers had stated that “Russia has lately massed
5,000 men on the Korean frontier, and 4,000 at Hun-chun.” It is not
desirable to make any inquiries about the positions and numbers of
Russian troops, and I had prudently abstained from asking questions,
and had looked forward with interest to seeing a great display of
military force. This hut is the military post of Krasnoye Celo, and
the “army” of Russia “massed on her Korean frontier” consisted of 15
men and a corporal, the officer being required to endure the isolation
of the position for six months, and the privates for one. The roars of
laughter which greeted the English statement were not complimentary to
newspaper accuracy.

The corporal’s small room was of no particular shape, and was furnished
with only a deal chair and small table, and a big earthen jar of
water, but it was well-warmed, and had an iron camp-bed in a recess
with a wire-wove mattress, much broken and “sagging,” the sharp points
of the broken wires sticking up in several places through the one rug
with which I attempted to mollify their asperities. This recess, which
just contained the bed, was curtained off for me, and the corporal,
Mr. Heidemann, and three Korean headmen lay closely packed on the
floor. The corporal, glad to have people to talk with, talked more than
half the night, and began again before daybreak. We supped on barrack
fare--black bread, barley brose, and tea, with the addition of a little
_kwass_, a very slightly fermented drink, made from black bread,
raisins, sugar, and a little _vodka_, _schnaps_ and _vodka_ containing
40 per cent. of alcohol. At 9 P.M. I was surprised and delighted with
the noble strains of a Greek Litany, chanted in well-balanced parts
from the barrack-room, the evening worship of the Cossacks.

My last sunset view of the Tu-men was of a sheet of ice. The headmen of
the Korean villages of Sajorni and Krasnoe, who were in council till
near midnight, thought it was impossible to get across, and they said
that the ferryboat was drawn ashore and was frozen in for the winter,
and that two Russian Commissioners and a General, after waiting for
three days, had left the day before, having failed. However, yielding
to my urgency, they set all the able-bodied men of Sajorni to work at 2
A.M. to dig the boat out, and by 7 she had moved some yards towards the
river, which, however, was still a sheet of ice. Later, the corporal
sent 14 of his men to help the Koreans, laughingly saying that I had
the “Whole Russian frontier army to get me across.” At 9 word came
that the boat was nearly afloat, and we started, on horseback, with
two baggage ponies, and rode a mile over the hills and through the
prosperous Korean village of Sajorni, down to a dazzling expanse of
sand through which the Tu-men flows to the sea, there 10 miles off.

The river ice was breaking up into large masses under the morning sun,
and between Russia and Korea there was much open water about 600 feet
broad. The experts said if we could get over at all it would be between
noon and 2, after which the ice would pack and freeze together again.
Koreans and Cossacks worked with a will, breaking the ice, digging
under the boat, and moving her with levers, but it was noon before the
unwieldy craft, used for the ferriage of oxen, moved into the water,
accompanied by a hearty cheer. She leaked badly, two men were required
to bale her, and the stern platform, by which animals enter her, was
carried away. The baggage was carried in by men wading much over their
knees, and then came the turn of the ponies, but not the whole Russian
army by force or persuasion could get those wretched animals embarked.

After a whole hour’s work and any amount of kicking, plunging,
and injuries, from getting one or two legs over the bulwarks, and
struggling back, and rolling backwards into the river, two were
apparently safe in the ferryboat, when suddenly they knocked over the
man who held them and jumped into the water, one blind animal being
rescued with difficulty, and the other cutting his legs considerably.
The ice was then fast forming, but the soldiers made one more attempt,
which failed, owing to what Americans would not inaptly call the
“cussedness” of the Siberian ponies. For the first time on any journey
I had to confess myself baffled, for it was impossible to swim the
contumacious animals across, owing to the heavy ice floes and the
low temperature of the water. I had sat on my pony watching these
proceedings for nearly four hours, watching too the grand Korean
mountains as they swept down to the icy river in every shade of cobalt
blue, varied by indigo shadows of the white cloud masses which sailed
slowly across the heavenly sky. At that point from which I most
reluctantly turned back, the Tu-men has a large volume of water, but
above and below sandbanks render the navigation so difficult that it
is only in the rainy season that flat-bottomed boats make the attempt,
and not always with success, to reach the Korean town of K’wan, 80
_versts_, or something over 50 miles, above Krasnoye Celo. The Chinese,
in the insane notion that Japan was about to land a large force on the
south bank of the Tu-men, had seized all the boats above the Russian
post.

[Illustration: RUSSIAN “ARMY,” KRASNOYE CELO.]

I photographed the “Russian army” and the barracks as well as the
Boundary Stone, and the corporal slouching against the scaly forlorn
quarters on the desolate height in an attitude of extreme dejection, as
we drove away leaving him to his usual dulness.

The days of the return journey gave me a good opportunity of learning
something of the condition of the Koreans under another Government than
their own. So long ago as 1863, 13 families from Ham-gyöng Do crossed
the frontier and settled on the river Tyzen Ho, a little to the north
of Possiet Bay. By 1866 there were 100 families there, very poor,
among which the Russian Government distributed cattle and seed for
cultivation.

During 1869, a year of very great scarcity in Northern Korea, 4,500
Koreans migrated, hunger-driven, into Primorsk, some 3,800 of them
being absolutely destitute. These had to be supported, no easy thing,
as the territory, only ceded to Russia a few years before, was but a
thinly peopled wilderness, and was also suffering from a bad harvest.

In 1897 there were in Primorsk 32 village districts, _i.e._ villages
with outlying hamlets, divided into 5 administrative districts. Besides
these, one village belongs to the city of Khabaroffka on the Amur,
and there are large Korean settlements adjacent to Wladivostok and
Nikolskoye. The total number of Korean immigrants is estimated at from
16,000 to 18,000. It must be remembered that several thousands of these
were literally paupers, and that they subsisted for nearly a year on
the charity of the Russian authorities, and after that were indebted
to them for seed corn. They settled on the rich lands of the Siberian
valleys mostly as squatters, but have been unmolested for many years.
Many have purchased the lands they occupy, and in other cases villages
have acquired community rights to their adjacent lands. It is the
intention of Government that squatting shall gradually be replaced by
purchase, the purchasers receiving legal title-deeds.

These alien settlers practically enjoy autonomy. At the head of each
district is an Elder or Headman, with from one to three assistants
according to its size. The police and their officers are Korean. In
each district there are two or three judges with their clerks, who try
minor offences. The headmen, who are responsible for order and the
collection of taxes, are paid salaries, or receive various allowances.
All these officials are Koreans, and are elected by the people
themselves from among themselves. The Government taxation is 10 roubles
(about £1) on each farm per annum. The local taxation, settled by the
villagers in council for their own purposes, such as roads, ditches,
bridges, and schools, is limited to 3 roubles per farm per annum. Men
who are not landholders pay from 1 to 2 roubles per annum.

Koreans settled in Siberia prior to 1884 can claim rights as Russian
subjects, and at this time those who can prove that they have been
settled on purchased lands for ten years can do so, as well as certain
others, well reported of as being of settled lives and good conduct.
Owing to the steady influx of settlers from Southern Russia, the rich
lands near the railroad are required for colonization, and further
immigration from Korea has been prohibited; The sending of Koreans who
are either squatters or of unsettled lives to the Amur Province is
under discussion.

The villages between Krasnoye Celo and Nowo Kiewsk are fair average
specimens of Russo-Korean settlements. The roads are fairly good, and
the ditches which border them well kept. Sanitary rules are strictly
enforced, the headman being made responsible for village cleanliness.
Unlike the poor, ragged, filthy villages of the peninsula, these
are well-built in Korean style, of whitewashed mud and laths, trimly
thatched, the compounds or farmyards are enclosed by whitewashed walls,
or high fences of neatly woven reeds, and look as if they were swept
every morning, and the farm buildings are substantial and well kept.
Even the pigsties testify to the Argus eyes of the district chiefs of
police.

Most of the dwellings have four, five, and even six rooms, with papered
walls and ceilings, fretwork doors and windows, “glazed” with white
translucent paper, finely matted floors, and an amount of plenishings
rarely to be found even in a mandarin’s house in Korea. Cabinets,
bureaus, and rice chests of ornamental wood with handsome brass
decorations, low tables, stools, cushions, brass samovars, dressers
displaying brass dinner services, brass bowls, china, tea-glasses,
brass candlesticks, brass kerosene lamps, and a host of other things,
illustrate the capacity to secure comfort. Pictures of the Tsar and
Tsaritza, of the Christ, and of Greek saints, and framed cards of
twelve Christian prayers, replace the coarse daubs of the family dæmons
in very many houses. Out of doors full granaries, ponies, mares with
foals, black pigs of an improved breed, draught oxen, and fat oxen for
the Wladivostok market, with ox-carts and agricultural implements,
attest solid material prosperity. It would be impossible for a
traveller to meet with more cordial hospitality and more cleanly and
comfortable accommodation than I did in these Korean homes.

But there is more than this. The air of the men has undergone a subtle
but real change, and the women, though they nominally keep up their
habit of seclusion, have lost the hang-dog air which distinguishes them
at home. The suspiciousness and indolent conceit, and the servility
to his betters, which characterize the home-bred Korean have very
generally given place to an independence and manliness of manner rather
British than Asiatic. The alacrity of movement is a change also, and
has replaced the conceited swing of the _yang-ban_ and the heartless
lounge of the peasant. There are many chances for making money, and
there is neither mandarin nor _yang-ban_ to squeeze it out of the
people when made, and comforts and a certain appearance of wealth no
longer attract the rapacious attentions of officials, but are rather
a credit to a man than a source of insecurity. All who work can be
comfortable, and many of the farmers are rich and engage in trade,
making and keeping extensive contracts.

Those Koreans who are not settled on lands chiefly in the direction of
the Chinese frontier, and who subsist by wood cutting and hauling, are
less well off, and their hamlets have something of squalor about them.

In Korea I had learned to think of Koreans as the dregs of a race, and
to regard their condition as hopeless, but in Primorsk I saw reason for
considerably modifying my opinion. It must be borne in mind that these
people, who have raised themselves into a prosperous farming class,
and who get an excellent character for industry and good conduct alike
from Russian police officials, Russian settlers, and military officers,
were not exceptionally industrious and thrifty men. They were mostly
starving folk who fled from famine, and their prosperity and general
demeanor give me the hope that their countrymen in Korea, if they ever
have an honest administration and protection for their earnings, may
slowly develop into _men_.

In parts of Western Asia I have had occasion to note the success of
Russian administration in conquered or acquired provinces, and with
subject races, specially her creation of an orderly, peaceful, and
settled agricultural population out of the nomadic and predatory tribes
of Turkestan. Her success with the Korean immigrants is in its way as
remarkable, for the material is inferior. She is firm where firmness
is necessary, but outside that limit allows extreme latitude, avoids
harassing aliens by petty prohibitions and irksome rules, encourages
those forms of local self-government which suit the genius and habits
of different peoples, and trusts to time, education, and contact with
other forms of civilization to amend what is reprehensible in customs,
religion, and costume.

A few days later I went to Hun-chun on the frontier of Chinese
Manchuria, from its position an important military post, and was most
hospitably received by the Commandant and his married _aide-de-camp_.
There, as everywhere in Primorsk, and from the civil as well as
the military authorities, I not only received the utmost kindness,
courtesy, and hospitality, but information was frankly given on the
various topics I was interested in, and help towards the attainment of
my objects. Hun-chun is in the midst of mountainous country, denuded
of wood in recent years, and abounding in rich, well-watered valleys
inhabited only by Koreans. A wilder, drearier, and more wind-swept
situation it would be hard to find.

Instead of “4,000 troops” there were only 200 Cossacks, housed in a
good brick barrack, one half of which is a much decorated chapel,
besides which there are only open thatched sheds for their hardy,
active Baikal horses, a small, well-arranged hospital, a wooden house
for the Colonel Commandant, and some terra-cotta mud-houses for the
officers and married troopers. The whole Russian military force from
Hun-chun to the Amur consisted of 1,500 Cossacks, distributed among
thirty frontier posts. The Commandant told me that their chief duty at
that time was the “daily” arresting of Chinese brigands who crossed
the frontier to harry the Korean villages, and who, on being marched
back and handed over to the mandarins, were at once liberated to repeat
their forays.

The Chinese had “massed” several thousand of their Manchu troops at
Hun-chun, and they had created such a reign of terror that the peasant
farmers had deserted their homes over a large area of country. The
soldiers, robbed by their officers of their nominal pay, and only
half fed, relied on unlimited pillage for making up the deficiency,
and neither women nor property were safe from their brutality and
violence. So desperately undisciplined were they that only a few
days before the Secretary and Interpreter of the Russian frontier
Commissioner at Nowo Kiewsk, visiting Hun-chun on official business,
narrowly escaped actual violence at their hands, and the Chinese
Governor told them that he had no control at all over the troops.
It was only the rigid discipline of the Cossacks which prevented
scrimmages which might have produced a serious conflagration.

[Illustration: KOREAN SETTLERS’ HOUSE.]




CHAPTER XX

THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILROAD


After returning to Wladivostok, accompanied by a young Danish gentleman
who was kindly lent to me by Messrs. Kuntz and Albers, and who spoke
English and Russian, I spent a week on the Ussuri Railway, the eastern
section of the Trans-Siberian Railway, going as far as the hamlet of
Ussuri on the Ussuri River at the great Ussuri Bridge, beyond which
the line, though completed for 50 _versts_, was not open for traffic.
Indeed, up to that point from Nikolskoye trains were run twice daily
rather to “settle the line” than for profit, and their average speed
was only twelve miles an hour. The weather was brilliant, varied by a
heavy snowstorm.

The present Tsar is understood to be enthusiastic about this railroad.
During his visit to Wladivostok in 1891, when Tsarevitch, he
inaugurated the undertaking by wheeling away the first barrowful of
earth and placing the first stone in position, after which, work was
begun simultaneously at both ends.

The eastern terminus of this great railroad undertaking is close to
the sea and the Government deep water pier, at which the fine steamers
from Odessa of the Russian “Volunteer Fleet” discharge their cargoes.
The station is large and very handsome, and both it and the noble
administrative offices are built of gray stone, with the architraves
of the doors and windows in red brick. Buffets and all else were in
efficient working order. In the winter of 1895-96 only third and fourth
class cars were running, the latter chiefly patronized by Koreans and
Chinese. Each third class carriage is divided into three compartments
with a corridor, and has a lavatory and steam-heating apparatus. The
backs of the seats are hooked up to form upper berths for sleeping, and
as the cars are eight feet high they admit of broad luggage shelves
above these. The engines which ran the traffic were old American
locomotives, but those which are to be introduced, as well as all the
rolling stock, are being manufactured in the Baltic provinces. So also
are the rails, the iron and steel bridges, the water tanks, the iron
work required for stations, and all else.

Large railway workshops with rows of substantial houses for artisans
have been erected at Nikolskoye, 102 _versts_ from Wladivostok, for the
repairs of rolling stock on the Ussuri section, and were already in
full activity.

There is nothing about this Ussuri Railway of the newness and
provisional aspect of the Western American lines, or even of parts of
the Canadian Pacific Railroad. The track was already ballasted as far
as Ussuri (327 _versts_), steel bridges spanned the minor streams, and
substantial stations either of stone or decorated wood, with buffets at
fixed distances, successfully compare both in stability and appearance
with those of our English branch lines. The tank houses are of hewn
stone. Houses for the employés, standing in neatly fenced gardens,
are both decorative and substantial, being built of cement and logs
protected by five coats of paint, and contain four rooms each. The
crossings are well laid and protected. Culverts and retaining walls
are of solid masonry, and telegraph wires accompany the road, which
is worked strictly on the block system. The aspect of solidity and
permanence is remarkable. Even the temporary bridge over the Ussuri,
1,050 feet in length, a trestle bridge of heavy timber to resist the
impact of the ice, is so massive as to make the great steel bridge, the
handsome abutments of which were already built, appear as if it would
be a work of supererogation.

Up to that point there are no serious embankments or cuttings, and the
gradients are easy. The cost of construction of the Ussuri section is
50,000 roubles per _verst_, a rouble at this time being worth about
2s. 2d. This includes rolling stock, stations, and all bridges except
that over the Amur, which was to cost 3,000,000 roubles, but may now be
dispensed with owing to the diversion of the route through Manchuria.
Convict labor was abandoned in 1894, and the line in Primorsk is being
constructed by Chinese “navvies,” who earn about 80 cents per day,
and who were bearing the rigor of a Siberian winter in well-warmed,
semi-subterranean huts, the line being pushed on as much as possible
during the cold season. For the first 102 _versts_, it passes along
prettily wooded shores of inlets and banks of streams, and the country
is fairly well peopled, judging from the number of sleighs and the
bustle at the six stations _en route_. The line as far as Nikolskoye
was opened in early November, 1893, and in a year had earned 280,000
roubles. The last section had only been open for eight weeks when I
travelled upon it.

Nikolskoye, where I spent two pleasant days at the hospitable
establishment of Messrs. Kuntz and Albers, is the only place between
Wladivostok and Ussuri of any present importance. It is a _village_ of
8,000 inhabitants on a rich rolling prairie, watered by the Siphun. It
has six streets of grotesque width, a _verst_ and a half long each.
There is no poverty. It is a place of rapid growth and prosperity, the
centre of a great trade in grain, and has a large flour mill owned by
Mr. Lindholm, a Government contractor. It has a spacious market-place
and bazaar, and two churches. It reminds me of parts of Salt Lake City,
and the houses are of wood, plastered and whitewashed, with corrugated
iron roofs mainly. A few are thatched. All stand in plots of garden
ground. Utilitarianism is supreme. I drove for 20 miles in the region
round the settlement, and everywhere saw prosperous farms and farming
villages on the prairie, Russian and Korean, and found the settlers
kindly and hospitable, and surrounded by material comfort. Nikolskoye
is a great military station. There were infantry and artillery to
the number of 9,000, and there, as elsewhere, large new barracks were
being pushed to completion. An area of 50 acres was covered with brick
barracks, magazines, stables, drill and parade grounds, and officers’
quarters, and the military club is a really fine building. Newness,
progress, and confidence in the future are as characteristic of
Nikolskoye as of any rising town in the Far West of America.

The farther journey, occupying the greater part of two days and a
night, except when near the swamps of the Hanka Lake, is through a
superb farming region. Large villages with windmills are met with along
the line for the first 30 _versts_, as far as the buffet station of
Spasskoje. The stoneless soil, a rich loam 6 feet and more in depth,
produces heavy crops of oats, wheat, barley, maize, rye, potatoes, and
tobacco. Beyond Spasskoje and east of the Hanka Lake up to the Amur a
magnificent region waits to be peopled.

Well may Eastern Siberia receive the name of Russia’s “Pacific Empire,”
including as it does the Amur and Maritime provinces, with their
area of 880,000 square miles,[32] rich in gold, copper, iron, lead,
and coal, and with a soil which for a vast extent is of unbounded
fertility. When China ceded to Russia in 1860 the region which we
call Russian Manchuria, she probably did so in ignorance of its vast
agricultural capacities and mineral wealth.

The noble Amur, with its forest-covered shores, is navigable for
1,000 miles, and already 50 merchant steamers ply upon it, and its
great tributary the Ussuri can be navigated to within 120 miles of
Wladivostok. The great basin of the Ussuri, it is estimated, could
support five million people, and from Khabaroffka to the Tu-men, it is
considered by experts that the land could sustain from 20 to 40 to the
square mile, while at present the population of the Amur and Ussuri
provinces is only ⁴⁄₅ths of a man to the square mile!

Grass, timber, water, coal, minerals, a soil as rich as the prairies of
Illinois, and a climate not only favorable to agriculture but to human
health, all await the settler, and the broad, unoccupied, and fertile
lands which Russian Manchuria offers are clamoring for inhabitants.
To set against these advantages there are the frozen waterways and
the ice-bound harbor. It is utterly impossible that an increasing
population will content itself without an outlet for its produce.
A port on the Pacific open all the year is fast becoming as much a
commercial as a political necessity, and doubtless the opening of the
Trans-Siberian Railroad four years hence will settle the question (if
it has not been settled before) and doom the policy which has shut
Russia up in regions of “thick ribbed ice” to utter extinction.

In the Maritime Province, Russia is steadily and solidly laying the
foundations of a new empire which she purposes to make as nearly as
possible a homogeneous one. “No foreigner need apply”! The emigrants,
who are going out at the rate of from 700 to 1,000 families a year,
are of a good class. Emigration is fostered in two ways. By the first,
the Government grants assisted passages to heads of families who are
possessed of 600 roubles (about £60 at present), which are deposited
with a Government official at Odessa, and are repaid to the emigrant
on landing at Wladivostok. The industry and thrift represented by
this sum indicate a large proportion of the best class of settlers.
Under the second arrangement, families possessed of little capital or
none receive free passages. On arriving, emigrants of both classes
are lodged in excellent emigrant barracks, and can buy the necessary
agricultural implements at cost price from a Government depôt, advice
as to the purchase being thrown in. Each family receives a free
allotment of from 200 to 300 acres of arable land, and a loan of 600
roubles, to be repaid without interest in thirty-two years, the young
male colonists being exempted from military service for the same
period. Already much of the land along the line as far as the Ussuri
has been allotted, and houses are rapidly springing up, and there is
nothing to prevent this fine country from being peopled up to the Amur,
the rivers Sungacha and Ussuri, which form the boundary of Russia
from the Hanka Lake to Khabaroffka, giving a natural protection from
Chinese brigandage. In addition to direct emigration, large numbers of
time-expired men, chiefly Cossacks, are encouraged to settle on lands
and do so.

It would be shortsighted to minimize the importance of the present
drift of population to Eastern Siberia, which is likely to assume
immense proportions on the opening of the railway, or the commercial
value of that colossal undertaking, which is greatly enhanced by the
treaty under which Russia has taken powers to run the Trans-Siberian
line through Chinese Manchuria. The creation of a new route which
will bring the Far East within 6,000 miles and 16 days of London, and
cheapen the cost of the transit of passengers very considerably, cannot
be overlooked either. The railroad is being built for futurity, and is
an enterprize worthy of the great nation which undertakes it.[33]


FOOTNOTES:

[32] The area of France is 204,000, and that of the British Isles
120,000 square miles.

[33] I am very glad to be able to fortify my opinion of the solid
and careful construction of this line by that of Colonel Waters,
military attaché to the British Embassy at St. Petersburg, who has
recently crossed Siberia, and desires to give emphatic testimony to
“the magnificent character of the great railway crossing Siberia,”
as well as by that of another recent traveller, Mr. J. Y. Simpson,
who, in _Blackwood’s Magazine_ for January, 1897, in an article “The
Great Siberian Iron Road,” after a long description of the laborious
carefulness with which the line is being built, writes thus: “Lastly,
one is impressed with the _extremely finished_ nature of the work.”




CHAPTER XXI

THE KING’S OATH--AN AUDIENCE


Leaving Wladivostok by the last Japanese steamer of the season, I
spent two days at Wön-san, little changed, except that its background
of mountains was snow-covered, that the Koreans were enriched by the
extravagant sums paid for labor by the Japanese during the war, that
business was active, and that Japanese sentries in wooden sentry-boxes
guarded the peaceful streets. Twelve thousand Japanese troops had
passed through Wön-san on their way to Phyöng-yang. At Fusan, my next
point, there were 200 Japanese soldiers, new waterworks, and a military
cemetery on a height, in which the number of graves showed an enormous
Japanese mortality.

Reaching Chemulpo on 5th January, 1895, _viâ_ Nagasaki, I found a
singular contrast to the crowd, bustle, and excitement of the previous
June. In the outer harbor there were two foreign warships only, in the
inner three Japanese merchant steamers. The former predominant military
element was represented by a few soldiers, ten large hospital sheds,
and a crowded cemetery, in which the Japanese military dead lie in rows
of 60, each grave marked by a wooden obelisk. The solid and crowded
Chinese quarter, with its roaring trade, large shops, and noise of
drums, gongs, and crackers, by day and night, was silent and deserted,
and not a single Chinese was in the street as I went up to I-tai’s inn.
One shop had ventured to reopen. At night, instead of throngs, noise,
lights, and jollification, there was a solitary glimmer from behind a
closed shutter. The Japanese occupation had been as destructive of that
quarter of Chemulpo as a mediæval pestilence.

In the Japanese quarter and all along the shore the utmost activity
prevailed. The beach was stacked with incoming and outgoing cargo. The
streets were only just passable, not alone from the enormous traffic on
bulls’ and coolies’ backs, but from the piles of beans and rice which
were being measured and packed on the roadway. Prices were high, wages
had more than doubled, “squeezing” was diminished, and the Koreans were
working with a will.

I went up to Seoul on horseback, snow falling the whole time. So safe
was the country that no escort was needed, and I rode as far as Oricol
without even a _mapu_. The halfway house of my first visit was a
Japanese post, and going to it in ignorance of the change, I was very
kindly received by the Japanese soldiers, who gave me tea and a brazier
of charcoal. The Seoul road, pegged out by Japanese surveyors for a
railroad, was thickly sprinkled for the whole distance with laden men
and bulls.

At Seoul I was the guest of Mr. Hillier, the British Consul-General,
for five weeks. The weather was glorious, and the mercury sank on
two occasions to 7° below zero, the lowest temperature on record. I
received the warmest welcome from the kindly foreign community, and was
steeped in Seoul life, the political and other interests growing upon
me daily; and having a pony and a soldier at my disposal, I saw the
city in all its turnings and windings, and the charming country outside
the gates, and several of the Royal tombs with their fine trees, and
avenues of stately stone figures.

The stagnation of the previous winter was at an end. Japan was in the
ascendant. She had a large garrison in the capital, some of the leading
men in the Cabinet were her nominees, her officers were drilling the
Korean army, changes, if not improvements, were everywhere, and the air
was thick with rumors of more to come. The King, whose Royal authority
was nominally restored to him, accepted the situation, the Queen was
credited with intriguing against the Japanese, but Count Inouye was
acting as Japanese minister, and his firmness and tact kept everything
smooth on the surface.

On the 8th of January, 1895, I witnessed a singular ceremony, which
may have far-reaching results in Korean history. The Japanese having
presented Korea with the gift of Independence, demanded that the King
should formally and publicly renounce the suzerainty of China, and
having resolved to cleanse the Augean stable of official corruption,
they compelled him to inaugurate the task by proceeding in semi-state
to the Altar of the Spirits of the Land, and there proclaiming Korean
independence, and swearing before the spirits of his ancestors to the
proposed reforms. His Majesty, by exaggerating a trivial ailment, had
for some time delayed a step which was very repulsive to him, and even
the day before the ceremony, a dream in which an Ancestral Spirit
had appeared to him adjuring him not to depart from ancestral ways,
terrified him from taking the proposed pledge.

But the spirit of Count Inouye proved more masterful than the Ancestral
Spirit, and the oath was taken in circumstances of great solemnity in a
dark pine wood, under the shadow of Puk Han, at the most sacred altar
in Korea, in presence of the Court and the dignitaries of the kingdom.
Old and serious men had fasted and mourned for two previous days, and
in the vast crowd of white-robed and black-hatted men which looked down
upon the striking scene from a hill in the grounds of the Mulberry
Palace, there was not a smile or a spoken word. The sky was dark and
grim, and a bitter east wind was blowing--ominous signs in Korean
estimation.

The Royal procession, which had something of the aspect of the
_kur-dong_, was shorn of the barbaric splendor which made that
ceremonial one of the most imposing in the Eastern world. It was, in
fact, barbaric with the splendor left out; and there were suggestions
of a new era and a forthcoming swamping wave of Western civilization,
in the presence within the Palace gates and in the procession of a
few trim, dapper, blue-ulstered Japanese policemen, as the special
protectors of the Home Minister Pak-Yöng-Ho, one of the revolutionaries
of 1884, against whom there was a vow of vengeance, though the King had
been compelled to pardon him, to reinstate his ancestors who had been
degraded, to recall him from exile, and to confer upon him high office.

The long road outside the Palace was lined with Korean cavalry, who
turned their faces to the wall and their backs and their ponies’ tails
to the King. Great numbers of Korean soldiers carrying various makes
of muskets, dressed in rusty black, brown, and blue cotton uniforms,
trousers sometimes a foot too short, at others a foot too long, white
wadded socks, string shoes, and black felt hats of Tyrolese style, with
pink ribbon round the crowns, stood in awkward huddles, mixed up with
the newly-created Seoul police in blue European uniforms, and a number
of handsome overfed ponies of Court officials, with saddles over a foot
high, gorgeous barbaric trappings, red pompons on their heads, and a
flow of red manes. The populace stood without speech or movement.

After a long delay and much speculation as to whether the King at
the last moment would resist the foreign pressure, the procession
emerged from the Palace gate--huge flags on trident-headed poles,
purple bundles carried aloft, a stand of stones conveyed with much
ceremony[34]--groups of scarlet- and blue-robed men in hats of the
same colors, shaped like fools’ caps, the King’s personal servants in
yellow robes and yellow bamboo hats, and men carrying bannerets. Then
came the red silk umbrella, followed not by the magnificent State chair
with its forty bearers, but by a plain wooden chair with glass sides,
in which sat the sovereign, pale and dejected, borne by only four men.
The Crown Prince followed in a similar chair. Mandarins, ministers,
and military officers were then assisted to mount their caparisoned
ponies, and each, with two attendants holding his stirrups and two
more leading his pony, fell in behind the Home Minister, riding a dark
donkey, and rendered conspicuous by his foreign saddle and foreign
guard. When the procession reached the sacred enclosure, the military
escort and the greater part of the cavalcade remained outside the wall,
only the King, dignitaries, and principal attendants proceeding to the
altar. The grouping of the scarlet-robed men under the dark pines was
most effective from an artistic point of view, and from a political
standpoint the taking of the following oath by the Korean King was one
of the most significant acts in the tedious drama of the late war.

[Illustration: KOREAN THRONE.]


THE KING’S OATH.

 On this 12th day of the 12th moon of the 503rd year of the founding
 of the Dynasty, we presume to announce clearly to the Spirits of
 all our Sacred Imperial Ancestors that we, their lowly descendant,
 received in early childhood, now thirty and one years ago, the mighty
 heritage of our ancestors, and that in reverent awe towards Heaven,
 and following in the rule and pattern of our ancestors, we, though we
 have encountered many troubles, have not loosed hold of the thread.
 How dare we, your lowly descendant, aver that we are acceptable to
 the heart of Heaven? It is only that our ancestors have graciously
 looked down upon us and benignly protected us. Splendidly did our
 ancestor lay the foundation of our Royal House, opening a way for us
 his descendants through five hundred years and three. Now, in our
 generation, the times are mightily changed, and men and matters are
 expanding. A friendly Power, designing to prove faithful, and the
 deliberations of our Council aiding thereto, show that only as an
 independent ruler can we make our country strong. How can we, your
 lowly descendant, not conform to the spirit of the time and thus guard
 the domain bequeathed by our ancestors? How venture not to strenuously
 exert ourselves and stiffen and anneal us in order to add lustre
 to the virtues of our predecessors. For all time from now no other
 State will we lean upon, but will make broad the steps of our country
 towards prosperity, building up the happiness of our people in order
 to strengthen the foundations of our independence. When we ponder on
 this course, let there be no sticking in the old ways, no practice of
 ease or of dalliance; but docilely let us carry out the great designs
 of our ancestors, watching and observing sublunary conditions,
 reforming our internal administration, remedying there accumulated
 abuses.

 We, your lowly descendant, do now take the fourteen clauses of the
 Great Charter and swear before the Spirits of our Ancestors in
 Heaven that we, reverently trusting in the merits bequeathed by our
 ancestors, will bring these to a successful issue, nor will we dare to
 go back on our word. Do you, bright Spirits, descend and behold!

 1. All thoughts of dependence on China shall be cut away, and a firm
 foundation for independence secured.

 2. A rule and ordinance for the Royal House shall be established, in
 order to make clear the line of succession and precedence among the
 Royal family.

 3. The King shall attend at the Great Hall for the inspection of
 affairs, where, after personally interrogating his Ministers, he shall
 decide upon matters of State. The Queen and the Royal family are not
 allowed to interfere.

 4. Palace matters and the government of the country must be kept
 separate, and may not be mixed up together.

 5. The duties and powers of the Cabinet and of the various Ministers
 shall be clearly defined.

 6. The payment of taxes by the people shall be regulated by law.
 Wrongful additions may not be made to the list, and no excess
 collected.

 7. The assessment and collection of the land tax, and the disbursement
 of expenditure, shall be under the charge and control of the Finance
 Department.

 8. The expenses of the Royal household shall be the first to be
 reduced, by way of setting an example to the various Ministries and
 local officials.

 9. An estimate shall be drawn up in advance each year of the
 expenditure of the Royal household and the various official
 establishments, putting on a firm foundation the management of the
 revenue.

 10. The regulations of the local officers must be revised in order to
 discriminate the functions of the local officials.

 11. Young men of intelligence in the country shall be sent abroad in
 order to study foreign science and industries.

 12. The instruction of army officers, and the practice of the methods
 of enlistment, to secure the foundation of a military system.

 13. Civil law and criminal law must be strictly and clearly laid down;
 none must be imprisoned or fined in excess, so that security of life
 and property may be ensured for all alike.

 14. Men shall be employed without regard to their origin, and in
 seeking for officials recourse shall be had to capital and country
 alike in order to widen the avenues for ability.

 Official translation of the text of the oath taken by His Majesty the
 King of Korea, at the Altar of Heaven, Seoul, on January 8, 1895.

Though at this date Korea is being reformed under other than Japanese
auspices, it is noteworthy that nearly every step in advance is on the
lines laid down by Japan.

Count Inouye is reported by the _Nichi Nichi Shimbun_ to have said
regarding Korea, “In my eyes there were only the Royal Family and the
nation.” Such a conclusion was legitimate in the early part of 1895,
and in arriving at it as I did I am glad to be sheltered by such an
unexceptionable authority.

Hence it was with real pleasure that I received an invitation from
the Queen to a private audience, to which I was accompanied by Mrs.
Underwood, an American medical missionary and the Queen’s physician
and valued friend. Mr. Hillier sent me to the Kyeng-pok Palace in an
eight-bearer official chair, escorted by the Korean Legation Guard.
I have been altogether six times at this palace, and always with
increased wonder at its intricacy, and admiration of its quaintness and
beauty.

Entering by a grand three-arched gateway with its stone-balustraded
stone staircase, and stone lions on stone pedestals below, one
is bewildered by the number of large flagged courtyards, huge
audience-halls, pavilions, buildings of all descriptions more or less
decorated, stone bridges, narrow passages, and gateways with double
tiered carved roofs through and among which one passes. A Japanese
policeman was at the grand gate. At each of the interior gates, and
there are many, there were six Korean sentries lounging, who pulled
themselves together as we approached and presented arms! What with 800
troops, 1,500 attendants and officials of all descriptions, courtiers
and ministers and their attendants, secretaries, messengers, and
hangers-on, the vast enclosure of the Palace seemed as crowded and
populated as the city itself. We had nearly half a mile of buildings
to pass through before we reached a very pretty artificial lake with
a decorative island pavilion in the centre, near which are a foreign
palace, built not long before, and the simple Korean buildings then
occupied by the King and Queen. Alighting at the gateway of the
courtyard which led to the Queen’s house, we were received by the Court
interpreter, a number of eunuchs, two of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting,
and her nurse, who was at the head of the Palace ladies--a very
privileged person, middle-aged, with decidedly fine features.

In a simple room hung with yellow silk we were entertained in courteous
fashion with coffee and cake on arriving, and afterwards at dinner,
the nurse, “supported” by the Court interpreter, taking the head of
the very prettily decorated table. The dinner was admirably cooked in
“foreign style,” and included soup, fish, quails, wild duck, pheasant,
stuffed and rolled beef, vegetables, creams, glacé walnuts, fruit,
claret, and coffee. Several of the Court ladies and others sat at table
with us. After this long delay we were ushered, accompanied only by
the interpreter, into a small audience-room, upon the dais at one end
of which stood the King, the Crown Prince, and the Queen in front of
three crimson velvet chairs, which, after Mrs. Underwood had presented
me, they resumed and asked us to be seated on two chairs which were
provided.

Her Majesty, who was then past forty, was a very nice-looking slender
woman, with glossy raven-black hair and a very pale skin, the pallor
enhanced by the use of pearl powder. The eyes were cold and keen, and
the general expression one of brilliant intelligence. She wore a very
handsome, very full, and very long skirt of mazarine blue brocade,
heavily pleated, With the waist under the arms, and a full sleeved
bodice of crimson and blue brocade, clasped at the throat by a coral
rosette, and girdled by six crimson and blue cords, each one clasped
with a coral rosette, with a crimson silk tassel hanging from it. Her
head-dress was a crownless black silk cap edged with fur, pointed over
the brow, with a coral rose and full red tassel in front, and jewelled
aigrettes on either side. Her shoes were of the same brocade as her
dress. As soon as she began to speak, and especially when she became
interested in conversation, her face lighted up into something very
like beauty.

The King is short and sallow, certainly a plain man, wearing a thin
moustache and a tuft on the chin. He is nervous and twitches his hands,
but his pose and manner are not without dignity. His face is pleasing,
and his kindliness of nature is well-known. In conversation the Queen
prompted him a good deal. He and the Crown Prince were dressed alike
in white leather shoes, wadded silk socks, and voluminous wadded white
trousers. Over these they wore first, white silk tunics, next pale
green ones, and over all sleeveless dresses of mazarine blue brocade.
The whole costume, being exquisitively fresh, was pleasing. On their
heads they wore hats and _mung-huns_ of very fine horsehair gauze, with
black silk hoods bordered with fur, for the mercury stood at 5° below
zero. The Crown Prince is fat and flabby, and though unfortunately
very near-sighted, etiquette forbids him to wear spectacles, and at
that time he produced on every one as on me the impression of being
completely an invalid. He was the only son and the idol of his mother,
who lived in ceaseless anxiety about his health, and in dread lest the
son of a concubine should be declared heir to the throne. To this cause
must be attributed several of her unscrupulous acts, her invoking the
continual aid of sorcerers, and her always increasing benefactions to
the Buddhist monks. During much of the audience mother and son sat with
clasped hands.

After the Queen had said many kind things to me personally, showing
herself quick-witted as well as courteous, she said something to
the King, who immediately took up the conversation and continued it
for another half-hour. At the close of the audience I asked leave to
photograph the Lake Pavilion, and the King said, “Why that alone?
come many days and photograph many things,” mentioning several;
and he added, “I should like you to be suitably attended.” We then
curtseyed ourselves out, after a very agreeable and interesting hour,
and as it was dusk, the King sent soldiers with us, and a number of
lantern-bearers, with floating drapery of red and green silk gauze.

Two days later the “suitable attendance” turned out to be an unwieldy
and embarrassing crowd, consisting of five military officers, half a
regiment of soldiers, and a number of Palace attendants! I was greatly
impressed by a certain grandeur and stateliness in the buildings, the
vast Hall of Audience resting on a much elevated terrace ascended by a
triple flight of granite stairs, the noble proportions of the building,
the richly carved ceiling with its manifold reticulations, painted red,
blue, and green, the colossal circular pillars, red with white bases,
and in the dimness of the vast area fronting the entrance, the shadowy
splendor of the Korean throne. Grand, too, in its simplicity and
solidity, is the Summer Palace or “Hall of Congratulations,” on a stone
platform approached by three granite bridges, in a lotus lake of oblong
form beautified conventionally with two stone-faced islands, and by a
broad flagged promenade carried the whole way round it on a stone-faced
embankment. This palace is a noble building. The upper hall, with its
vast sweeping roof, is supported on forty-eight granite pillars 16 feet
in height and 3 feet square at the base-all monoliths. The situation
and the views are beautiful.

[Illustration: SUMMER PAVILION, OR “HALL OF CONGRATULATIONS.”]

During the next three weeks I had three more audiences, on the second
being accompanied as before by Mrs. Underwood, the third being a formal
reception, and the fourth a strictly private interview, lasting over an
hour. On each occasion I was impressed with the grace and charming
manner of the Queen, her thoughtful kindness, her singular intelligence
and force, and her remarkable conversational power even through
the medium of an interpreter. I was not surprised at her singular
political influence, or her sway over the King and many others. She
was surrounded by enemies, chief among them being the Tai-Won-Kun, the
King’s father, all embittered against her because by her talent and
force she had succeeded in placing members of her family in nearly all
the chief offices of State. Her life was a battle. She fought with all
her charm, shrewdness, and sagacity for power, for the dignity and
safety of her husband and son, and for the downfall of the Tai-Won-Kun.
She had cut short many lives, but in doing so she had not violated
Korean tradition and custom, and some excuse for her lies in the fact
that soon after the King’s accession his father sent to the house of
Her Majesty’s brother an infernal machine in the shape of a beautiful
box, which on being opened exploded, killing her mother, brother, and
nephew, as well as some others. Since then he plotted against her own
life, and the feud between them was usually at fever heat.

The dynasty is worn out, and the King, with all his amiability and
kindness of heart, is weak in character and is at the mercy of
designing men, as has appeared increasingly since the strong sway of
the Queen was withdrawn. I believe him to be at heart, according to
his lights, a patriotic sovereign. Far from standing in the way of
reform, he has accepted most of the suggestions offered to him. But
unfortunately for a man whose edicts become the law of the land, and
more unfortunately for the land, he is persuadable by the last person
who gets his ear, he lacks backbone and tenacity of purpose, and many
of the best projects of reform become abortive through his weakness
of will. To substitute constitutional restraints for absolutism would
greatly mend matters, but _cela va sans dire_ this could only be
successful under foreign initiative.

The King was forty-three, the Queen a little older. During his
minority, and while he was receiving the usual Chinese education, his
father, the Tai-Won-Kun, who is described by a Korean writer as having
“bowels of iron and a heart of stone,” ruled as Regent with excessive
vigor for ten years, and in 1866 put 2,000 Korean Catholics to death.
Able, rapacious, and unscrupulous, his footsteps have always been
blood-stained. He even put to death one of his own sons. From the time
when his Regency ceased until the murder of the Queen, Korean political
history is mainly the story of the deadly feud between the Queen and
her clan and the Tai-Won-Kun. I was presented to him at the Palace, and
was much impressed by the vitality and energy of his expression, his
keen glance, and the vigor of his movements, though he is an old man.

The King’s expression is gentle. He has a wonderful memory, and is
said to know Korean history so well that when any question as to fact
or former custom arises he can give full particulars, with a precise
reference to the reign in which any historic event occurred and to
the date. The office of Royal Reader is not a sinecure, and the Royal
Library, which is contained in one of the most beautiful buildings of
the Kyeng-pok Palace, is a very extensive one in Chinese literature. He
has no anti-foreign feeling. His friendliness to foreigners is marked,
and in his manifold perils he has frankly relied upon their aid. At
the time of my second visit, when Japan was in the ascendant, the King
and Queen showed special attention and kindness to Europeans, and even
invited the whole foreign community to a skating party on the lake.
The King’s attitude towards Christian Missions is very friendly, and
toleration is a reality. The American medical attendants of both the
King and Queen, as well as other foreigners, with whom they were in
constant contact, were warmly attached to them, and I think that the
general feeling among Koreans is one of affectionate loyalty, the blame
for oppressive and mistaken actions being laid on the ministers.

[Illustration: ROYAL LIBRARY, KYENG-POK PALACE.]

I have dwelt so long on the King’s personality because he is _de facto_
the Korean Government, and not a mere figure-head, as there is no
constitution, written or unwritten, no representative assembly, and
it may be said no law except his published Edicts. He is extremely
industrious as a ruler, acquaints himself with all the work of
departments, receives and attends to an infinity of reports and
memorials, and concerns himself with all that is done in the name of
Government. It is often said that in close attention to detail he
undertakes more than any one man could perform. At the same time he
has not the capacity for getting a general grip of affairs. He has so
much goodness of heart and so much sympathy with progressive ideas,
that if he had more force of character and intellect, and were less
easily swayed by unworthy men, he might make a good sovereign, but his
weakness of character is fatal.

The subjects of conversation introduced at three of my audiences
not only showed an intelligent desire for such information as might
be serviceable, but reflected the reforms which the Japanese were
pressing on the King. I was very closely questioned as to what I had
seen of China and Siberia, as to the Siberian and Japanese railroads,
cost of construction per _li_, as to the popular feeling in Japan
concerning the war, etc. Again I was catechised as to the avenues to
official employment in England, the possibility of men “not of the
noble class” reaching high positions in the Government, the position of
the English nobility with regard to “privileges,” and their attitude
to inferiors. On one day the whole attention of the King and Queen
was concentrated on the relations between the English Crown and the
Cabinet, specially with regard to the Civil List, on which the King’s
questions were so numerous and persistent as very nearly to pose me. He
was specially anxious to know if the “Finance Minister” (the Chancellor
of the Exchequer, I suppose) exercised any control over the personal
expenditure of Her Majesty, and if the Queen’s personal accounts were
paid by herself or through the Treasury. The affairs under the control
of each Secretary of State were the subject of another series of
questions.

Many queries were about the duties of the Home Minister, the position
of the Premier, and his relations with the other Ministers and the
Crown. He was very anxious to know if the Queen could dismiss her
Ministers if they failed to carry out her wishes, and it was impossible
to explain to him through an interpreter, to whom the ideas were
unfamiliar, the constitutional checks on the English Crown, and that
the sovereign only nominally possesses the right of choosing her
Ministers.

Just before I left Korea, I was summoned to a farewell audience,
and asked to take the Legation interpreter with me. I went in an
eight-bearer chair, and was received with the usual honors, soldiers
presenting arms, etc! There was no crowd of attendants and no delay.
As I was being escorted down a closed veranda by several eunuchs
and military officers, a sliding window was opened by the King, who
beckoned to me to enter, and then closed it. I found myself in the
raised alcove in which the Royal Family usually sat, but the sliding
panels between it and the audience-chamber were closed, and as it is
not more than 6 feet wide, it was impossible to make the customary
profound curtseys. Instead of the usual throng of attendants, eunuchs,
ladies-in-waiting in silk gowns a yard too long for them, and heavy
coils and pillows of artificial hair on their heads, and privileged
persons standing behind the King and Queen and crowding the many
doorways, there were present only the Queen’s nurse and my interpreter,
who stood at a chink between the panels where he could not see the
Queen, bent into an attitude of abject reverence, never lifting
his eyes from the ground or raising his voice above a whisper. The
precautions, however, failed to secure the privacy which the King and
Queen desired. I was certain that through the chink I saw the shadow
of a man in the audience-room, and the interpreter’s subsequent
remark, “It was very hard for me to interpret for His Majesty to-day”
was intelligible when I heard that the “shadow” belonged to one of the
Ministers of State specially distrusted by the King, and who later
had to fly from Korea. It was understood that this person carried the
substance of what the King and Queen said to a foreign legation.

I cannot here allude to the matter on which the King spoke, but the
audience, which lasted for an hour, was an extremely interesting one.
On one point the King expressed himself very strongly, as he has
done to many others. He considers that now that Korea is formally
independent of China, she is entitled to a Resident Minister accredited
solely to the Korean Court. He expressed great regard and esteem for
Mr. Hillier, and said that nothing would be more acceptable to him than
his appointment as the first Minister to Korea.

The Queen spoke of Queen Victoria, and said, “She has everything that
she can wish--greatness, wealth, and power. Her sons and grandsons are
kings and emperors, and her daughters empresses. Does she ever in her
glory think of poor Korea? She does so much good in the world, her life
is a good. We wish her long life and prosperity”; to which the King
added, “England is our best friend.” It was really touching to hear the
occupants of that ancient but shaky throne speaking in this fashion.

On this occasion the Queen was dressed in a bodice of brocaded amber
satin, a mazarine blue brocaded trained skirt, a crimson girdle with
five clasps and tassels of coral, and a coral clasp at the throat. Her
head was uncovered, and her abundant black hair gathered into a knot
at the back. She wore no ornament except a pearl and coral jewel on
the top of the head. The King and Queen rose when I took leave, and
the Queen shook hands. They both spoke most kindly, and expressed the
wish that I should return and see more of Korea. When I did return nine
months later, the Queen had been barbarously murdered, and the King
was practically a prisoner in his own palace.

Travellers received by the Korean King have often ridiculed the
audience, the surroundings, and the Palace. I must say that I saw
nothing to ridicule, unless national customs and etiquette varying
from our own are necessarily ridiculous. On the contrary, there were
a simplicity, dignity, kindliness, courtesy, and propriety which have
left a very agreeable impression on me, and my four audiences at Palace
were the great feature of my second visit to Korea.

[Illustration: KOREAN GENTLEMAN IN COURT DRESS.]


FOOTNOTES:

[34] These are ancient musical instruments called by the Chinese
_ch’ing_, and were in use at courts in the days of Confucius.




CHAPTER XXII

A TRANSITION STAGE


During January, 1895, Seoul was in a curious condition. The “old order”
was changing, but the new had not taken its place. The Japanese,
victorious by land and sea, were in a position to enforce the reforms
in which before the war they had asked China to coöperate. The King,
since the capture of the Palace by the Japanese in July, 1894, had
become little more than a “salaried automaton,” and the once powerful
members of the Min clan had been expelled from their offices. The
Japanese were prepared to accept the responsibility of the supervision
of all departments, and to enforce honesty on a corrupt executive.
The victory over the Chinese at Phyöng-yang on 17th September, 1894,
had set them free to carry out their purposes. Count Inouye, one of
the foremost of the statesmen who created the new Japan, arrived as
“Resident” on October 20, 1894, and practically administered the
Government in the King’s name. There were Japanese controllers in all
the departments, the army was drilled by Japanese drill instructors,
a police force was organized and clothed in badly fitting Japanese
uniforms, a Council of Koreans was appointed to draft a scheme of
reform, and form the nucleus of a possible Korean Parliament, and
Count Inouye as Japanese adviser had the right of continual access
to the King, and with an interpreter and stenographer sat at the
meetings of the Cabinet. Every day Japanese ascendency was apparent in
new appointments, regulations, abolitions, and reforms. The Japanese
claimed that their purpose was to reform the administration of Korea
as we had done that of Egypt, and I believe they would have done it had
they been allowed a free hand. It was apparent, however, that Count
Inouye found the task of reformation a far harder one than he expected,
and that the difficulties in his way were nearly insurmountable. He
said himself that there were “no tools to work with,” and in the hope
of manufacturing them a large number of youths of the upper class were
sent for two years to Japan, one year to be spent in education and
another in learning accuracy and “the first principles of honor” in
certain Government departments.

Sundry Japanese demands, though conceded at the time by the King, had
been allowed to drop, and it was not till December, 1894, that Count
Inouye obtained a formal covenant that five of them should be at once
carried out. (1) A full pardon for all the conspirators of 1884;
(2) That the Tai-Won-Kun and the Queen should interfere no more in
public affairs; (3) That no relatives of the Royal Family should be
employed in any official capacity; (4) That the number of eunuchs and
“Palace ladies” should at once be reduced to a minimum; (5) That caste
distinctions--patrician and plebeian--should no longer be recognized.

Edicts on some of the foregoing subjects appeared in the _Gazette_,
and large numbers of the eunuchs packed up their clothes and left
the Palace quietly in the night, along with the “Palace ladies”; but
the King in his vast dwelling was so lonely without them that the
next morning he sent an order commanding their immediate return under
serious penalties, and it was obeyed at once!

The attitude of the Korean official class, with the exception of a
small number who were personally interested in the success of Japan,
was altogether unfavorable to the new _régime_, and every change was
regarded with indignation. Though destitute of true patriotism, the
common people looked upon the King as a sacred person, and they were
furious at the indignities to which he had been subjected. The official
class saw that reform meant the end of “squeezing” and ill-gotten
gains, and they, with the whole army of parasites and hangers-on of
_yamens_, were all pledged by the strongest personal interest to oppose
it by active opposition or passive resistance. Though corruption has
its stronghold in Seoul, every provincial government repeats on a
smaller scale the iniquities of the capital, and has its own army
of dishonest and lazy officials fattening on the earnings of the
industrious classes.

The cleansing of the Augean stable of the Korean official system, which
the Japanese had undertaken, was indeed an Herculean labor. Traditions
of honor and honesty, if they ever existed, had been forgotten for
centuries. Standards of official rectitude were unknown. In Korea when
the Japanese undertook the work of reform there were but two classes,
the robbers and the robbed, and the robbers included the vast army
which constituted officialdom. “Squeezing” and peculation were the rule
from the highest to the lowest, and every position was bought and sold.

The transition stage, down to 12th February, 1895, when I left Korea,
was a remarkable one. The _Official Gazette_ curiously reflected that
singular period. One day a decree abolished the 3 feet long tobacco
pipes which were the delight of the Koreans of the capital; another,
there was an enlightened statute ordering the planting of pines to
remedy the denudation of the hills around Seoul, the same _Gazette_
directing that duly appointed geomancers should find “an auspicious
day” on which the King might worship at the ancestral tablets! One
day barbarous and brutalizing punishments were wisely abolished;
another, there appeared a string of vexatious and petty regulations
calculated to harass the Chinese out of the kingdom, and appointing as
a punishment for the breach of them a fine of 100 dollars or 100 blows!

Failure in tact was one great fault of the Japanese. The seizure of the
Palace and the King’s person in July, 1894, even if a dubious political
necessity, did not excuse the indignities to which the sovereign was
exposed. The forcing of former conspirators into high office was a
grave error, and tactless proceedings, such as the abolition of long
pipes, alterations in Court and other dress, many interferences with
social customs, and petty and harassing restrictions and regulations,
embittered the people against the new _régime_.

The Tong-haks, who had respectfully thrown off allegiance to the King
on the ground that he was in the hands of foreigners, and had appointed
another sovereign, had been vanquished early in January, and their
king’s head had been sent to Seoul by a loyal governor. There I saw it
in the busiest part of the Peking Road, a bustling market outside the
“little West Gate,” hanging from a rude arrangement of three sticks
like a camp-kettle stand, with another head below it. Both faces wore a
calm, almost dignified, expression. Not far off two more heads had been
exposed in a similar frame, but it had given way, and they lay in the
dust of the roadway, much gnawed by dogs at the back. The last agony
was stiffened on their features. A turnip lay beside them, and some
small children cut pieces from it and presented them mockingly to the
blackened mouths. This brutalizing spectacle had existed for a week.

Three days later, in the stillness of the Korean New Year’s Day, I rode
with a friend along a lonely road passing through a fair agricultural
valley among pine-clothed knolls outside the South and East Gates of
Seoul. Snow lay on the ground and the grim sky threatened a further
storm. It was cold, and we observed with surprise three coolies in
summer cotton clothing lying by the roadside asleep; but it was the
last sleep, for on approaching them we found that, though their
attitudes were those of easy repose, the bodies were without heads, nor
had the headsman’s axe been merciful or sharp. In the middle of the
road were great, frozen, crimson splashes where the Tong-hak leaders
had expiated their treason, criminals in Korea, as in old Jerusalem,
suffering “without the gate.”

A few days later an order appeared in the _Gazette_ abolishing
beheading and “slicing to death,” and substituting death by
strangulation for civil, and by shooting for military capital crimes.
This order practically made an end of the prerogative of life and death
heretofore possessed by the Korean sovereigns.

So the “old order” was daily changing under the pressure of the
Japanese advisers, and on the whole changing most decidedly for
the better, though, owing to the number of reforms decreed and in
contemplation, everything was in a tentative and chaotic state. Korea
was “swithering” between China and Japan, afraid to go in heartily for
the reforms initiated by Japan lest China should regain position and be
“down” upon her, and afraid to oppose them actively lest Japan should
be permanently successful.

On that same New Year’s Day there was more to be seen than headless
trunks. Through the length of Seoul, towards twilight, an odor of
burning hair overpowered the aromatic scent of the pine brush, and
all down every street, outside every door, there were red glimmers
of light. It is the custom in every family on that day to carry out
the carefully preserved clippings and combings of the family hair and
burn them in potsherds, a practice which it is hoped will prevent the
entrance of certain dæmons into the house during the year. Rude straw
dolls stuffed with a few _cash_ were also thrown into the street. This
effigy is believed to take away troubles and foist them on whoever
picks it up. To prevent such a vicarious calamity, more than one mother
on that evening pounced upon a child who childlike had picked up the
doll and threw it far from him.

On that night round pieces of red or white paper placed in cleft sticks
are put upon the roofs of houses, and those persons who have been
warned by the sorcerers of troubles to come, pray (?) to the moon to
remove them.

A common Korean custom on the same day is for people to paint images
on paper, and to write against them their troubles of body or mind,
afterwards giving the paper to a boy who burns it.

A more singular New Year custom in Seoul is “Walking the Bridges.” Up
to midnight, men, women, and children cross a bridge or bridges as many
times as they are years old. This is believed to prevent pains in the
feet and legs during the year.

This day, the “Great Fifteenth Day,” concludes the kite-flying and
stone fights which enliven Seoul for the previous fortnight, and every
Korean insists on keeping it as a holiday. Graves are formally visited,
and gathered families spread food before the ancestral tablets. Curious
customs prevail at this time. A few days before, the Palace eunuchs
chant invocations, swinging burning torches as they do so. This is
supposed to ensure bountiful crops for the next season. People buy
quantities of nuts, which they crack, hold the kernels in the mouth,
and then throw them away. This is to prevent summer sores and boils.
Also on the Great Fifteenth Day men try to find out the probable
rainfall for each month by splitting a small piece of bamboo, and
laying twelve beans side by side in one of the halves, after which it
is closed, and after being bound tightly with cord, is lowered into a
well for the night. Each bean represents a month. In the morning, when
they are examined in rotation, they are variously enlarged, and the
enlargement indicates the proportion of rain in that special moon. If,
on the contrary, one or more are wizened, it causes great alarm, as
indicating complete or partial drought in one or more months. Dogs do
not get their usual meal on the morning of the “Great Fifteenth,” in
the belief that the deprivation will keep them from being pestered with
flies during the long summer.

If a boy has been born during the year, poles bearing paper fish by day
and lanterns by night project from the house of the parents. The people
at night watch the burning of candles. If they are entirely burned, the
life of the child will be long; if only partially burned, it will be
proportionately shorter.

I left Seoul very regretfully on 5th February. The Japanese had
introduced _jinrikshas_, but the runners were unskilled, and I met with
so severe an accident in going down to Chemulpo that I did not recover
for a year. The line of steamers to Japan was totally disorganized by
the war, and in the week that I waited for the _Higo Maru_ war was
uppermost in people’s thoughts. There were some who even then could not
bring themselves to believe in the eventual success of the Japanese.
The fall of Wei-hai-wei and the capture of the Chinese fleet opened
many eyes. I was in the office of the “N.Y.K.” when the news came, and
the clerks were too wild with excitement to attend to me, apologizing
by saying, “It’s another victory!” Chemulpo was decorated, illuminated,
and processioned for victories, Li Hung Chang was burned in effigy, and
unlimited _sake_ for all comers was supplied from tubs at the street
corners.

There were indications of the cost of victory, however. The great
military hospitals were full, the cemetery was filling fast, military
funerals with military pomp and Shinto priests passed down the bannered
street, and 600 transport coolies tramping from Manchuria arrived in
rags and tatters, some clothed in raw hides and raw skins of sheep,
their feet, hands, and lips frost-bitten, and with blackened stumps of
fingers and toes protruding from filthy bandages. The Japanese schools
teach that Japan has a right to demand all that a man has, and that
life itself is not too costly a sacrifice for him to lay on the altar
of his country. Undoubtedly the teaching bears fruit. Not long before
at Osaka I saw the wharves piled high with voluntary contributions for
the troops, and the Third Army leave the city amidst an outburst of
popular enthusiasm such as I never saw equalled. Most of these coolies,
when they received new clothing, volunteered for further service, and
dying soldiers on battlefields and in hospitals uttered “_Dai Nippon
Banzai!_” (Great Japan forever!) with their last faltering breath.

When I left Korea the condition of things may be summarized
thus. Japan was thoroughly in earnest as to reforming the Korean
administration through Koreans, and very many reforms were decreed
or in contemplation, while some evils and abuses were already swept
away. The King, deprived of his absolute sovereignty, was practically
a salaried registrar of decrees. Count Inouye occupied the position of
“Resident,” and the Government was administered in the King’s name by a
Cabinet consisting of the heads of ten departments, in some measure the
nominees of the “Resident.”[35]

[Illustration: PLACE OF THE QUEEN’S CREMATION.]


FOOTNOTES:

[35] I repeat this statement in this form for the benefit of the
reader, and ask him to compare it with a summary of Korean affairs
early in 1897, given in the 36th chapter of this volume.




CHAPTER XXIII

THE ASSASSINATION OF THE QUEEN


In May, 1895, a treaty of peace between China and Japan was signed at
Shimonoseki, a heavy indemnity, the island of Formosa, and a great
accession of prestige, being the gains of Japan. From thenceforward no
power having interests in the Far East could afford to regard her as a
_quantité négligéable_.

After travelling for some months in South and Mid China, and spending
the summer in Japan, I arrived in Nagasaki in October, 1895, to hear a
rumor of the assassination of the Korean Queen, afterwards confirmed
on board the _Suruga Maru_ by Mr. Sill, the American Minister, who was
hurrying back to his post in Seoul in consequence of the disturbed
state of affairs. I went up immediately from Chemulpo to the capital,
where I was Mr. Hillier’s guest at the English Legation for two
exciting months.

The native and foreign communities were naturally much excited by the
tragedy at the Palace, and the treatment which the King was receiving.
Count Inouye, whose presence in Seoul always produced confidence, had
left a month before, and had been succeeded by General Viscount Miura,
a capable soldier, without diplomatic experience.

In an interview which Count Inouye had with the Queen shortly before
his departure, speaking of the ascendency of the Tai-Won-Kun, after the
capture of the Palace by Mr. Otori in the previous July, Her Majesty
said, “It is a matter of regret to me that the overtures made by me
towards Japan were rejected. The Tai-Won-Kun, on the other hand, who
showed his unfriendliness towards Japan, was assisted by the Japanese
Minister to rise in power.”

In the despatch in which Count Inouye reported this interview to his
Government he wrote:--

 I gave as far as I could an explanation of these things to the Queen,
 and after so allaying her suspicions, I further explained that it was
 the true and sincere desire of the Emperor and Government of Japan to
 place the independence of Korea on a firm basis, and in the meantime
 to strengthen the Royal House of Korea. _In the event of any member of
 the Royal Family, or indeed any Korean, therefore attempting treason
 against the Royal House, I gave the assurance that the Japanese
 Government would not fail to protect the Royal House even by force of
 arms, and so secure the safety of the kingdom._ These remarks of mine
 seemed to have moved the King and Queen, and their anxiety for the
 future appeared to be much relieved.

The Korean sovereigns would naturally think themselves justified
in relying on the promise so frankly given by one of the most
distinguished of Japanese statesmen, whom they had learned to regard
with confidence and respect, and it is clear to myself that when the
fateful night came, a month later, their reliance on this assurance
led them to omit certain possible precautions, and caused the Queen to
neglect to make her escape at the first hint of danger.

When the well-known arrangement between Viscount Miura and the
Tai-Won-Kun was ripe for execution, the Japanese Minister directed the
Commandant of the Japanese battalion quartered in the barracks just
outside the Palace gate to facilitate the Tai-Won-Kun’s entry into
the Palace by arranging the disposition of the _Kun-ren-tai_ (Korean
troops drilled by Japanese), and by calling out the Imperial force to
support them. Miura also called upon two Japanese to collect their
friends, go to Riong San on the Han, where the intriguing Prince was
then living, and act as his bodyguard on his journey to the Palace. The
Minister told them that on the success of the enterprise depended the
eradication of the evils which had afflicted the kingdom for twenty
years, and INSTIGATED THEM TO DISPATCH THE QUEEN WHEN THEY ENTERED THE
PALACE. One of Miura’s agents then ordered the Japanese policemen who
were off duty to put on civilian dress, provide themselves with swords,
and accompany the conspirators to the Tai-Won-Kun’s house.

At 3 A.M. on the morning of the 8th of October they left Riong San,
escorting the Prince’s palanquin, Mr. Okamoto, to whom much had been
entrusted, assembling the whole party when on the point of departure,
and declaring to them that on entering the Palace the “Fox” should be
dealt with according “as exigency might require.” Then this procession,
including ten Japanese who had dressed themselves in uniforms taken
from ten captured Korean police, started for Seoul, more than three
miles distant. Outside the “Gate of Staunch Loyalty” they were met by
the _Kun-ren-tai_, and then waited for the arrival of the Japanese
troops, after which they proceeded at a rapid pace to the Palace,
entering it by the front gate, and after killing some of the Palace
Guard, proceeded a quarter of a mile to the buildings occupied by the
King and Queen, which have a narrow courtyard in front.

So far I have followed the Hiroshima judgment in its statement of the
facts of that morning, but when it has conducted the combined force to
“the inner chambers” it concludes abruptly with a “not proven” in the
case of all the accused! For the rest of the story, so far as it may
interest my readers, I follow the statements of General Dye and Mr.
Sabatin of the King’s Guard, and of certain official documents.

It is necessary here to go back upon various events which preceded
the murder of Her Majesty. Trouble arose in October between the
_Kun-ren-tai_ and the Seoul police, resulting in the total defeat of
the latter. The _Kun-ren-tai_, numbering 1,000, were commanded by
Colonel Hong, who in 1882 had rescued the Queen from imminent danger,
and was trusted by the Royal Family. The Palace was in the hands of
the Old Guard under Colonel Hyön, who had saved Her Majesty’s life
in 1884. In the first week of October the strength of this Guard
was greatly reduced, useful weapons were quietly withdrawn, and the
ammunition was removed.

On the night of the 7th the _Kun-ren-tai_, with their Japanese
instructors, marched and countermarched till they were found on all
sides of the Palace, causing some uneasiness within. The alarm was
given to General Dye and Mr. Sabatin early on the morning of the
8th.[36] These officers, looking through a chink of the gate, saw a
number of Japanese soldiers with fixed bayonets standing there, who,
on being asked what they were doing, filed right and left out of the
moonlight under the shadow of the wall. Skulking under another part of
the wall were over 200 of the _Kun-ren-tai_. The two foreigners were
consulting as to the steps to be taken when heavy sounds of battering
came from the grand entrance gate, followed by firing.

General Dye attempted to rally the Guard, but after five or six volleys
from the assailants they broke with such a rush as to sweep the two
foreigners past the King’s house to the gateway of the Queen’s. No
clear account has ever been given of the events which followed. Colonel
Hong, the commander of the _Kun-ren-tai_, was cut down by a Japanese
officer at the great gate, and was afterwards mortally wounded by eight
bullets. The _Kun-ren-tai_ swarmed into the Palace from all directions,
along with Japanese civilians armed with swords, who frantically
demanded the whereabouts of the Queen, hauling the Palace ladies about
by the hair to compel them to point out Her Majesty, rushing in and out
of windows, throwing the ladies-in-waiting from the 7 feet high veranda
into the compound, cutting and kicking them, and brutally murdering
four in the hope that they had thus secured their victim.

Japanese troops also entered the Palace, and formed in military order
under the command of their officers round the small courtyard of
the King’s house and at its gate, protecting the assassins in their
murderous work. Before this force of Japanese regulars arrived there
was a flying rout of servants, runners, and Palace Guards rushing from
every point of the vast enclosure in mad haste to get out of the gates.
As the Japanese entered the building, the unfortunate King, hoping to
divert their attention and give the Queen time to escape, came into
a front room where he could be distinctly seen. Some of the Japanese
assassins rushed in brandishing their swords, pulled His Majesty about,
and beat and dragged about some of the Palace ladies by the hair in
his presence. The Crown Prince, who was in an inner room, was seized,
his hat torn off and broken, and he was pulled about by the hair and
threatened with swords to make him show the way to the Queen, but he
managed to reach the King, and they have never been separated since.

The whole affair did not occupy much more than an hour. The Crown
Prince saw his mother rush down a passage followed by a Japanese with
a sword, and there was a general rush of assassins for her sleeping
apartments. In the upper story the Crown Princess was found with
several ladies, and she was dragged by the hair, cut with a sword,
beaten, and thrown downstairs. Yi Kyöng-jik, Minister of the Royal
Household, seems to have given the alarm, for the Queen was dressed and
was preparing to run and hide herself. When the murderers rushed in, he
stood with outstretched arms in front of Her Majesty, trying to protect
her, furnishing them with the clue they wanted. They slashed off both
his hands and inflicted other wounds, but he contrived to drag himself
along the veranda into the King’s presence, where he bled to death.

The Queen, flying from the assassins, was overtaken and stabbed,
falling down as if dead, but one account says that, recovering a
little, she asked if the Crown Prince, her idol, was safe, on which
a Japanese jumped on her breast and stabbed her through and through
with his sword. Even then, though the nurse whom I formerly saw in
attendance on her covered her face, it is not certain that she was
dead, but the Japanese laid her on a plank, wrapped a silk quilt round
her, and she was carried to a grove of pines in the adjacent deer park,
where kerosene oil was poured over the body, which was surrounded by
faggots and burned, only a few small bones escaping destruction.

Thus perished, at the age of forty-four, by the hands of foreign
assassins, instigated to their bloody work by the Minister of a
friendly power, the clever, ambitious, intriguing, fascinating, and in
many respects lovable Queen of Korea. In her lifetime Count Inouye,
whose verdict for many reasons may be accepted, said, “Her Majesty has
few equals among her countrymen for shrewdness and sagacity. In the art
of conciliating her enemies and winning the confidence of her servants
she has no equals.”

A short time after daylight the Tai-Won-Kun issued two proclamations,
of which the following sentences are specimens:--

 1st, “The hearts of the people dissolve through the presence in the
 Palace of a crowd of base fellows. So the National Grand Duke is
 returned to power to inaugurate changes, expel the base fellows,
 restore former laws, and vindicate the dignity of His Majesty.”

 2nd, “I have now entered the Palace to aid His Majesty, expel the low
 fellows, perfect that which will be a benefit, save the country, and
 introduce peace.”

The Palace gates were guarded by the mutinous _Kun-ren-tai_ with fixed
bayonets, who allowed a constant stream of Koreans to pass out, the
remnants of the Old Palace Guard, who had thrown off their uniforms and
hidden their arms, each man being seized and searched before his exit
was permitted. Near the gate was a crimson pool marking the spot where
Colonel Hong fell. Three of the Ministers were at once dismissed from
their posts, some escaped, and many of the high officials sought safety
in flight. Nearly every one who was trusted by the King was removed,
and several of the chief offices of State were filled by the nominees
of the officers of the _Kun-ren-tai_, who, later, when they did not
find the Cabinet, which was chiefly of their own creation, sufficiently
subservient, used to threaten it with drawn swords.

Viscount Miura arrived at the Palace at daylight, with Mr. Sugimura,
Secretary of the Japanese Legation (who had arranged the details of the
plot), and a certain Japanese who had been seen by the King apparently
leading the assassins, and actively participating in the bloody work,
and had an audience of His Majesty, who was profoundly agitated. He
signed three documents at their bidding, after which the Japanese
troops were withdrawn from the Palace, and the armed forces, and even
the King’s personal attendants, were placed under the orders of those
who had been concerned in attack. The Tai-Won-Kun was present at this
audience.

During the day all the Foreign Representatives had audiences of the
King, who was much agitated, sobbed at intervals, and, believing the
Queen to have escaped, was very solicitous about his own safety, as
he was environed by assassins, the most unscrupulous of all being
his own father. In violation of custom, he grasped the hands of
the Representatives, and asked them to use their friendly offices
to prevent further outrage and violence. He was anxious that the
_Kun-ren-tai_ should be replaced by Japanese troops. On the same
afternoon the Foreign Representatives met at the Japanese Legation
to hear Viscount Miura’s explanation of circumstances in which his
countrymen were so seriously implicated.

Three days after the events in the Palace, and while the King and
the general public believed the Queen to be alive, a so-called Royal
Edict, a more infamous outrage on the Queen even than her brutal
assassination, was published in the _Official Gazette_. The King on
being asked to sign it refused, and said he would have his hands cut
off rather, but it appeared as his decree, and bore the signatures
of the Minister of the Household, the Prime Minister, and six other
members of the Cabinet.


ROYAL EDICT.

 It is now thirty-two years since We ascended the throne, but Our
 ruling influence has not extended wide. The Queen Min introduced her
 relatives to the Court and placed them about Our person, whereby
 she made dull Our senses, exposed the people to extortion, put Our
 Government in disorder, selling offices and titles. Hence tyranny
 prevailed all over the country and robbers arose in all quarters.
 Under these circumstances the foundation of Our dynasty was in
 imminent peril. We knew the extreme of her wickedness, but could not
 dismiss and punish her because of helplessness and fear of her party.

 We desire to stop and suppress her influence. In the twelfth moon of
 last year we took an oath at Our Ancestral Shrine that the Queen and
 her relatives and Ours should never again be allowed to interfere in
 State affairs. We hoped this would lead the Min faction to mend their
 ways. But the Queen did not give up her wickedness, but with her party
 aided a crowd of low fellows to rise up about Us and so managed as
 to prevent the Ministers of State from consulting Us. Moreover, they
 have forged Our signature to a decree to disband Our loyal soldiers,
 thereby instigating and raising a disturbance, and when it occurred
 she escaped as in the Im O year. We have endeavored to discover
 her whereabouts, but as she does not come forth and appear We are
 convinced that she is not only unfitted and unworthy of the Queen’s
 rank, but also that her guilt is excessive and brimful. Therefore
 with her We may not succeed to the glory of the Royal Ancestry. So We
 hereby depose her from the rank of Queen and reduce her to the level
 of the lowest class.

  Signed by
  YI CHAI-MYON, Minister of the Royal Household.
  KIM HONG-CHIP, Prime Minister.
  KIM YUN-SIK, Minister of Foreign Affairs.
  PAK CHONG-YANG, Minister of Home Affairs.
  SHIM SANG-HUN, Minister of Finance.
  CHO HEUI-YON, Minister of War.
  SO KWANG-POM, Minister of Justice.
  SO KWANG-POM, Minister of Education.
  CHONG PYONG-HA, Vice-Minister of Agriculture and Commerce.

On the day following the issue of this fraudulent and infamous edict,
another appeared in which Her Majesty, out of pity for the Crown Prince
and as a reward for his deep devotion to his father, was “raised” by
the King to the rank of “Concubine of the First Order”!

The diplomats were harassed and anxious, and met constantly to
discuss the situation. Of course the state of extreme tension was not
caused solely by “happenings” in Korea and their local consequences.
For behind this well-executed plot, and the diabolical murder of a
defenceless woman, lay a terrible suspicion, which gained in strength
every hour during the first few days after the tragedy till it
intensified into a certainty, of which people spoke as in cipher, by
hints alone, that other brains than Korean planned the plot, that other
than Korean hands took the lives that were taken, that the sentries
who guarded the King’s apartments while the deed of blood was being
perpetrated wore other than Korean uniforms, and that other than Korean
bayonets gleamed in the shadow of the Palace wall.

People spoke their suspicions cautiously, though the evidence of
General Dye and of Mr. Sabatin pointed unmistakably in one direction.
So early as the day after the affair, the question which emerged
was, “Is Viscount General Miura criminally implicated or not?” It
is needless to go into particulars on this subject. Ten days after
the tragedy at the Palace, the Japanese Government, which was soon
proved innocent of any complicity in the affair, recalled and arrested
Viscount Miura, Sugimura, and Okamoto, Adviser to the Korean War
Department, who, some months later, along with forty-five others, were
placed on their trial before the Japanese Court of First Instance at
Hiroshima, and were acquitted on the technical ground that there was
“no sufficient evidence to prove that any of the accused actually
committed the crime originally meditated by them,” this crime,
according to the judgment, being that two of the accused, “AT THE
INSTIGATION OF MIURA, DECIDED TO MURDER THE QUEEN, and took steps by
collecting accomplices ... more than ten others were directed by these
two persons to do away with the Queen.”

Viscount Miura was replaced by Mr. Komura, an able diplomatist, and
shortly afterwards Count Inouye arrived, bearing the condolences of
the Emperor of Japan to the unfortunate Korean King. A heavier blow
to Japanese prestige and position as the leader of civilization in
the East could not have been struck, and the Government continues
to deserve our sympathy on the occasion. For when the disavowal is
forgotten, it will be always remembered that the murderous plot was
arranged in the Japanese Legation, and that of the Japanese dressed as
civilians and armed with swords and pistols, who were directly engaged
in the outrages committed in the Palace, some were advisers to the
Korean Government and in its pay, and others were Japanese policemen
connected with the Japanese Legation--sixty persons in all, including
those known as _Soshi_, and exclusive of the Japanese troops.

The Foreign Representatives with one exception informed the Cabinet
that until steps were taken to bring the assassins to justice, till the
_Kun-ren-tai_ Guard was removed from the Palace, and till the recently
introduced members of the Cabinet who were responsible for the outrages
had been arraigned or at least removed from office, they declined to
recognize any act of the Government, or to accept as authentic any
order issued by it in the King’s name. The prudence of this course
became apparent later.

On 15th October, in an extra issue of the _Official Gazette_, it was
announced “By Royal Command” that, as the position of Queen must not
remain vacant for a day, proceedings for the choice of a bride were
to begin at once! This was only one among the many insults which were
heaped upon the Royal prisoner.

During the remainder of October and November there was no improvement
in affairs. The gloom was profound. Instead of Royal receptions and
entertainments, the King, shaken by terror and in hourly dread of
poison or assassination, was a close prisoner in a poor part of his
own palace, in the hands of a Cabinet chiefly composed of men who were
the tools of the mutinous soldiers who were practically his jailers,
compelled to put his seal to edicts which he loathed, the tool of men
on whose hands the blood of his murdered Queen was hardly dry. Nothing
could be more pitiable than the condition of the King and Crown Prince,
each dreading that the other would be slain before his eyes, not daring
to eat of any food prepared in the Palace, dreading to be separated,
even for a few minutes, without an adherent whom they could trust, and
with recent memories of infinite horror as food for contemplation.

General Dye, the American military adviser, an old and feeble man,
slept near the Palace Library, and the American missionaries in twos
took it in turns to watch with him. This was the only protection
which the unfortunate sovereign possessed. He was also visited daily
by the Foreign Representatives in turns, with the double object of
ascertaining that he was alive and assuring him of their sympathy and
interest. Food was supplied to him in a locked box from the Russian or
U. S. Legations, but so closely was he watched, that it was difficult
to pass the key into his hand, and a hasty and very occasional whisper
was the only communication he could succeed in making to these
foreigners, who were his sole reliance. Undoubtedly from the first he
hoped to escape either to the English or Russian Legation. At times he
sobbed piteously and shook the hands of the foreigners, who made no
attempt to conceal the sympathy they felt for the always courteous and
kindly sovereign.

Entertainments among the foreigners ceased. The dismay was too profound
and the mourning too real to permit even of the mild gaieties of
a Seoul winter. Every foreign lady, and specially Mrs. Underwood,
Her Majesty’s medical attendant, and Mme. Waeber, who had been an
intimate friend, felt her death as a personal loss. Her Oriental
unscrupulousness in politics was forgotten in the horror excited by the
story of her end. Yet then and for some time afterwards people clung
to the hope that she had escaped as on a former occasion, and was in
hiding. Among Koreans opinion was greatly concealed, for there were
innumerable arrests, and no one knew when his turn might come, but it
was believed that there was an earnest desire to liberate the King. A
number of foreign warships lay at Chemulpo, and the British, Russian,
and American Legations were guarded by marines.

Nearly a month after the assassination of the Queen, and when all
hope of her escape had been abandoned, the condition of things was so
serious under the rule of the new Cabinet, that an attempt was made
by the Foreign Representatives to terminate it by urging on Count
Inouye to disarm the _Kun-ren-tai_, and occupy the Palace with Japanese
troops until the loyal soldiers had been drilled into an efficiency
on which the King might rely for his personal safety. It will be
seen from this proposal how completely the Japanese Government was
exonerated from blame by the diplomatic agents of the Great Powers.
This proposal was not received with cordial alacrity by Count Inouye,
who felt that the step of an armed reoccupation of the Palace by the
Japanese, though with the object of securing the King’s safety, would
be liable to serious misconstruction, and might bring about very
grave complications. Such an idea was only to be entertained if Japan
received a distinct mandate from the Powers. The telegraph was set to
work, a due amount of consent to the arrangement was obtained, and when
I left Seoul on a northern journey on November 7th, it was in the full
belief that on reaching Phyöng-yang I should find a telegram announcing
that this serious _coup d’état_ had been successfully accomplished in
the presence of the Foreign Representatives. Japan, however, did not
undertake the task, though urged to do so both by Count Inouye and
Mr. Komura, the new Representative, and the _Kun-ren-tai_ remained in
power, and the King a prisoner. Had the recommendation of the Foreign
Representatives, among whom the Russian Representatives was the most
emphatic in urging the interference of Japan, been adopted, it is
more than probable that the present predominance of Russian influence
in Korea would have been avoided. It is only fair to the Russian
Government to state that it gave a distinct mandate to the Japanese
to disarm the _Kun-ren-tai_ and take charge of the King. The Japanese
Government declined, and therefore is alone responsible for Russia’s
subsequent intervention.

During November the dissatisfaction throughout Korea with the measures
which were taken and proposed increased, and the position became so
strained, owing to the demand of the Foreign Representatives and of
all classes of Koreans that the occurrences of the 8th of October must
be investigated, and that the fiction of the Queen being in hiding
should be abandoned, that the Cabinet unwillingly recognized that
something must be done. So on 26th November the Foreign Representatives
were invited by the King to the Palace, and the Prime Minister, in
presence of His Majesty, who was profoundly agitated, produced a
decree bearing the King’s signature, dismissing the special nominees
of the mutineers, the Ministers of War and Police, declaring that the
so-called Edict degrading the Queen was set aside and treated as void
from the beginning, and that she was reinstated in her former honors;
that the occurrences of the 8th October were to be investigated by the
Department of Justice, and that the guilty persons were to be tried and
punished. The death of Her Majesty was announced at the same time.

At the conclusion of this audience, Mr. Sill, the United States
Minister, expressed to the King “his profound satisfaction with the
announcement.” Mr. Hillier followed by “congratulating His Majesty on
these satisfactory steps, and hoped it would be the beginning of a time
of peace and tranquillity, and relieve His Majesty from much anxiety.”
These good wishes were cordially endorsed by his colleagues.

The measures proposed by the King to reassert his lost authority and
punish the conspirators promised very well, but were rendered abortive
by a “loyal plot,” which was formed by the Old Palace Guard and a
number of Koreans, some of them by no means insignificant men. It had
for its object the liberation of the sovereign and the substitution
of loyal troops for the _Kun-ren-tai_. Though it ended in a fiasco
two nights after this hopeful interview, its execution having been
frustrated by premature disclosures, its results were disastrous,
for it involved a number of prominent men, created grave suspicions,
raised up a feeling of antagonism to foreigners, some of whom (American
missionaries) were believed to be cognizant of the plot, if not
actually accessories, and brought about a general confusion, from
which, when I left Korea five weeks later, there was no prospect of
escape. The King was a closer prisoner than ever; those surrounding him
grew familiar and insolent; he lived in dread of assassination; and
he had no more intercourse with foreigners, except with those who had
an official right to enter the Palace, which they became increasingly
unwilling to exercise.

It was with much regret that I left Seoul for a journey in the interior
at this most exciting time, when every day brought fresh events and
rumors, and a _coup d’état_ of great importance was believed to be
impending; but I had very little time at my disposal before proceeding
to Western China on a long-planned journey.


FOOTNOTES:

[36] General Dye, late of the U.S. army, was instructor of the Old
Guard. Mr. Sabatin, a Russian subject, was temporarily employed as a
watchman to see that the sentries were at their posts.




CHAPTER XXIV

BURIAL CUSTOMS


After the interpreter difficulty had appeared as before insurmountable,
I was provided with one who acquitted himself to perfection, and
through whose good offices I came much nearer to the people than if I
had been accompanied by a foreigner. He spoke English remarkably well,
was always bright, courteous, intelligent, and good-natured; he had a
keen sense of the ludicrous, and I owe much of the pleasure, as well as
the interest, of my journey to his companionship. Mr. Hillier equipped
me with Im, a soldier of the Legation Guard, as my servant. He had
attended me on photographing expeditions on a former visit, and on the
journey I found him capable, faithful, quick, and full of “go,”--so
valuable and efficient, indeed, as to “take the shine” out of any
subsequent attendant. With these, a passport, and a _kwan-ja_ or letter
from the Korean Foreign Office commending me to official help (never
used), my journey was made under the best possible auspices.

The day before I left was spent in making acquaintance with Mr. Yi
Hak In, receiving farewell visits from many kind and helpful friends,
looking over the backs and tackle of the ponies I had engaged for
the journey, and in arranging a photographic outfit. Im was taught
to make curry, an accomplishment in which he soon excelled, and I
had no other cooking done on the journey. For the benefit of future
travellers I will mention that my equipment consisted of a camp-bed
and bedding, candles, a large, strong, doubly oiled sheet, a folding
chair, a kettle, two pots, a cup and two plates of enamelled iron,
some tea which turned out musty, some flour, curry powder, and
a tin of Edward’s “dessicated soup,” which came back unopened!
To the oft-repeated question, “Did you eat Korean food?” I reply
certainly--pheasants, fowls, potatoes, and eggs. Warm winter clothing,
a Japanese _kurumaya’s_ hat (the best of all travelling hats), and
Korean string shoes completed my outfit, and I never needed anything I
had not got!

The start on 7th November was managed in good time, without any of
the usual delays, and I may say at once that the _mapu_, the bugbear
and torment of travellers usually, never gave the slightest trouble.
Though engaged by the day, they were ready to make long day’s journeys,
were always willing and helpful, and a month later we parted excellent
friends. As this is my second favorable experience, I am inclined to
think that Korean _mapu_ are a maligned class. For each pony and man,
the food of both being included, I paid $1, about 2s., per day when
travelling, and half that sum when halting. Mr. Yi had two ponies, I
two baggage animals, on one of which Im rode, and a saddle pony, _i.e._
a pack pony equipped with my sidesaddle for the occasion.

Starting from the English Legation and the Customs’ buildings, we left
the city by the West Gate, and passing the stone stumps which up till
lately supported the carved and colored roof under which generations
of Korean kings after their accession met the Chinese envoys, who came
in great state to invest them with Korean sovereignty, and through
the narrow and rugged defile known as the Peking Pass, we left the
unique capital and its lofty clambering wall out of sight. The day was
splendid even for a Korean autumn, and the frightful black pinnacles,
serrated ridges, and flaming corrugations of Puk Han on the right
of the road were atmospherically idealized into perfect beauty. For
several miles the road was thronged with bulls loaded with faggots,
rice, and pine brush, for the supply of the daily necessities of
the city; then, except when passing through the villages, it became
solitary enough, except for an occasional group of long-sworded
Japanese travellers, or baggage ponies in charge of Japanese soldiers.

The road as far as Pa Ju lies through pretty country, small valleys
either terraced for rice, which was lying out to dry on the dykes,
or growing barley, wheat, millet, and cotton, surrounded by low but
shapely hills, denuded of everything but oak and pine scrub, but with
folds in which the _Pinus sinensis_ grew in dark clumps, lighted up
by the vanishing scarlet of the maple and the glowing crimson of the
_Ampelopsis Veitchii_.

On the lower slopes, and usually in close proximity to the timber, are
numerous villages, their groups of deep-eaved, brown-thatched roofs,
on which scarlet capsicums were laid out to dry, looking pretty enough
as adjuncts to landscapes which on the whole lack life and emphasis.
The villages through which the road passes were seen at their best, for
the roadway, serving for the village threshing floor, was daily swept
for the threshing of rice and millet, the passage of travellers being a
secondary consideration; everything was dry, and the white clothes of
the people were consequently at their cleanliest.

At noon we reached Ko-yang, a poor place of 300 hovels, with ruinous
official buildings of some size, once handsome. At this, and every
other magistracy up to Phyöng-yang, from 20 to 30 Japanese soldiers
were quartered in the _yamens_. The people hated them with a hatred
which is the legacy of three centuries, but could not allege anything
against them, admitting that they paid for all they got, molested no
one, and were seldom seen outside the _yamen_ gates. There the _mapu_
halted for two hours to give their ponies and themselves a feed.
This midday halt is one bone of contention between travellers and
themselves. No amount of hunting and worrying them shortens the halt by
more than ten minutes, and I preferred peace of spirit, only insisting
that when the road admitted of it, as it frequently did, they should
travel 12 _li_, or about three and three-quarter miles, an hour. At
Ko-yang I began the custom of giving the landlord of the inn at which
I halted 100 _cash_ for the room in which I rested, which gave great
satisfaction. I had my mattress laid upon the hot floor, and as Im,
by instinct, secured privacy for me by fastening up mats and curtains
over the paper walls and doors, these midday halts were very pleasant.
Almost every house in these roadside villages and small towns has a low
table of such food as Koreans love laid out under the eaves.

Beyond Ko-yang, standing out in endless solemnity above a pine wood on
the side of a steep hill, are two of the strangely few antiquities of
which Korea can boast. These are two _mirioks_, colossal busts, about
35 feet in height, carved out of the solid rock. They are supposed to
be relics of the very early days of Korean Buddhism, when men were
religious enough to toil at such stupendous works, and to represent the
male and female elements in nature. They are side by side. One wears
a round and the other a square hat. The Buddhistic calm, or rather
I should say apathy, rests on their huge faces, which have looked
stolidly on many a change in Korea, but on none greater than the last
year had witnessed.

During the day we saw three funerals, and I observed that a Japanese
detachment which occupied the whole road filed to the right and left
to let one of the processions pass, the men raising their caps to the
corpse as they did so. These funerals gave an impression of gaiety
rather than grief. Two men walked first, carrying silk bannerets which
designated the woman about to be interred as the wife of so and so, a
married woman having no name. Next came a man walking backwards with
many streamers of colored ribbon floating from his hat, ringing a large
bell, and accompanying its clang with a dissonance supposed to be
singing. The coffin, under a four-posted domed cover and concealed by
gay curtains, was borne on a platform by twelve men, and was followed
by a large party of male mourners, a man with a musical instrument, a
table, and a box of food. None of the faces were composed to a look of
grief. On the dome were two mythical birds resembling the phœnix. The
dome and curtains were brilliantly colored, and decorated with ribbon
streamers. Two corpses, each extended on a board and covered with white
paper pasted over small hoops, lay in the roadway at different places.
These were bodies of persons who had died far from home and were being
conveyed to their friends for burial. Later we met another funeral, the
corpse carried as before on a platform by twelve bearers, who moved
to a rhythmic chant of the most cheerful description, the whole party
being as jolly as if they were going to a marriage. There was a cross
in front of the gay hearse with an extended dragon on each arm, and
four large gaily painted birds resembling pheasants were on the dome.

Korean customs as to death and burial deserve a brief notice. When a
man or woman falls ill, the _mu-tang_ or sorceress is called in to
exorcise the spirit which has caused the illness. When this fails and
death becomes imminent, in the case of a man no women are allowed to
remain in the room but his nearest female relations, and in that of a
woman all men must withdraw except her husband, father, and brother.
After death the body, specially at the joints, is shampooed, and when
it has been made flexible it is covered with a clean sheet and laid for
three days on a board, on which seven stars are painted. This board is
eventually burned at the grave. The “Star Board,” as it is called, is
a euphemism for death, and is spoken of as we speak of “the grave.”
During these days the grave-clothes, which are of good materials in
red, blue, and yellow coloring, are prepared. Korean custom enjoins
that burial shall be delayed in the case of a poor man three days only,
in that of a middle class man nine days, of a nobleman or high official
three months, and in that of one of the Royal Family nine months, but
this period may be abridged or extended at the pleasure of the King.

Man is supposed to have three souls. After death one occupies the
tablet, one the grave, and one the Unknown. During the passing of
the spirit there is complete silence. The under garments of the dead
are taken out by a servant, who waves them in the air and calls him
by name, the relations and friends meantime wailing loudly. After
a time the clothes are thrown upon the roof. When the corpse has
been temporarily dressed, it is bound so tightly round the chest as
sometimes to break the shoulder blades, which is interpreted as a sign
of good luck. After these last offices a table is placed outside the
door, on which are three bowls of rice and a squash. Beside it are
three pair of straw sandals. The rice and sandals are for the three
_sajas_, or official servants, who come to conduct one of the souls
to the “Ten Judges.” The squash is broken, the shoes burned, and the
rice thrown away within half an hour after death. Pictures of the
_Siptai-wong_ or “Ten Judges” are to be seen in Buddhist temples in
Korea. On a man’s death one of his souls is seized by their servants
and carried to the Unknown, where these Judges, who through their spies
are kept well-informed as to human deeds, sentence it accordingly,
either to “a good place” or to one of the manifold hells. The influence
of Buddhism doubtless maintains the observance of this singular custom,
even where the idea of its significance is lost or discredited.

The coffin is oblong. Where interment is delayed, it is hermetically
sealed with several coats of lacquer. Until the funeral there is
wailing daily in the dead man’s house at the three hours of meals. Next
the geomancer is consulted about the site for the grave, and receives
a fee heavy in proportion to the means of the family. He is believed
from long study to have become acquainted with all the good and bad
influences which are said to reside in the ground. A fortunate site
brings rank, wealth, and many sons to the sons and grandsons of the
deceased, and should be, if possible, on the southerly slope of a hill.
He also chooses an auspicious day for the burial.

In the case of a rich man, the grave with a stone altar in front of it
is prepared beforehand, in that of a poor man not till the procession
arrives. The coffin is placed in a gaily decorated hearse, and with
wailing, music, singing, wine, food, and if in the evening, with many
colored lanterns, the _cortège_ proceeds to the grave. A widow may
accompany her husband’s corpse in a closed chair, though this appears
unusual, but the mourners are all men in immense hats, which conceal
their faces, and sackcloth clothing.

After the burial and the making of the circular mound over the coffin,
a libation of wine is poured out and the company proceeds to sacrifice
and to feast. Offerings of wine and dried fish are placed on the stone
altar in front of the grave if it has been erected, or on small tables.
The relatives, facing these and the grave, make five prostrations,
and a formula wishing peace to the spirit which is to dwell there is
repeated. Behind the grave similar offerings and prostrations are made
to the mountain spirit, who presides over it, and who is the host of
the soul committed to his care. The wine is thrown away, and the fish
bestowed upon the servants. It will be observed that no priest has any
part in the ceremonies connected with death and burial, and that two
souls have now been disposed of--one to the judgment of the Unknown,
and the other to the keeping of the mountain spirit.

A chair is invariably carried in a funeral procession containing the
memorial, or, as we say, the “ancestral tablet” of the deceased, a
strip of white wood, bearing the family name, set in a socket. A part
of the inscription on this is written at the house, and it is completed
at the grave. It is carried back with exactly the same style and
attendance that the dead man would have had had he been living, for the
third soul is supposed to return to the house with the mourners, and
to take up its abode in the tablet, which is placed in a vacant room
and raised on a black lacquer chair with a black lacquer table before
it, on which renewed offerings are made of bread, wine, cooked meat,
and vermicelli soup, the spirit being supposed to regale itself with
their odors. The mourners again prostrate themselves five times, after
which they eat the offerings in an adjoining room. It is customary for
friends to strew the route of the procession with paper money.

In the period between the death and the interment silence is observed
in the house of mourning, and only those visitors are received who come
to condole with the family and speak of the virtues of the departed.
It is believed that conversation on any ordinary topic will cause the
corpse to shake in the coffin and show other symptoms of unrest. For
the same reason the servants are very particular in watching the cats
of the household if there are any, but cats are not in favor in Korea.
It is terribly unlucky for a cat to jump over a corpse. It may even
cause it to stand upright. After the deceased has been carried out
of the house, two or three _mu-tangs_ or sorceresses enter it with
musical instruments and the other paraphernalia of their profession.
After a time one becomes “inspired” by the spirit of the dead man,
and accurately impersonates him, even to his small tricks of manner,
movement, and speech. She gives a narrative of his life in the first
person singular, if he were a bad man confessing his misdeeds, which
may have been unsuspected by his neighbors, and if he were a good man,
narrating his virtues with becoming modesty. At the end she bows, takes
a solemn farewell of those present, and retires.

After the tablet has been removed to the ancestral temple, and the
period of mourning is over, meals are offered in the shrine once every
month, and also on the anniversary of each death, all the descendants
assembling, and these observances extend backwards to the ancestors
of five generations. Thus it is a very costly thing to have many near
relations and a number of ancestors, the expense falling on the eldest
son and his heirs. A Korean gentleman told me that his nephew, upon
whom this duty falls, spends more upon it than upon his household
expenses.

It is not till the three years’ mourning for a father has expired that
his tablet is removed to the ancestral temple which rich men have near
their houses. During the period of mourning it is kept in a vacant
room, usually in the women’s apartments. A poor man puts it in a box on
one side of his room, and when he worships his other ancestors, strips
of paper with their names upon them are pasted on the mud wall. I have
slept in rooms in which the tablet lay smothered in dust on one of the
crossbeams. Common people only worship for their ancestors of three
generations. The anniversary of a father’s death is kept with much
ceremony for three years. On the previous night sacrifice is offered
before the tablet, and on the following day the friends pay visits of
condolence to the family, and eat varieties of food. During the day
they visit the grave and offer sacrifices to the soul and the mountain
spirit.

A widow wears mourning all her life. If she has no son she acts the
part of a son in performing the ancestral rites for her husband. It has
not been correct for widows to remarry. If, however, a widow inherits
property she occasionally marries to rid herself of importunities, in
which case she is usually robbed and deserted.

The custom of tolerating the remarriage of widows has, however, lately
been changed into the _right_ of remarriage.




CHAPTER XXV

SONG-DO: A ROYAL CITY


It grew dark before we reached Pa Ju, and the _mapu_ were in great
terror of tigers and robbers. It is unpleasant to reach a Korean
inn after nightfall, for there are no lights by which to unload the
baggage, and noise and confusion prevail.

When the traveller arrives a man rushes in with a brush, stirs up the
dust and vermin, and sometimes puts down a coarse mat. Experience has
taught me that an oiled sheet is a better protection against vermin
than a pony-load of insect powder. I made much use of the tripod of
my camera. It served as a candle-stand, a barometer suspender, and an
arrangement on which to hang my clothes at night out of harm’s way. In
two hours after arrival my food was ready, after which Mr. Yi came in
to talk over the day, to plan the morrow, to enlighten me on Korean
customs, and to interpret my orders to the faithful Im, and by 8.30 I
was asleep!

After leaving Pa Ju the country is extremely pretty, and one of the
most picturesque views in Korea is from the height overlooking the
romantically situated village of Im-jin, clustering along both sides of
a ravine, which terminates on the broad Im-jin Gang, a tributary of the
Han, in two steep rocky bluffs, sprinkled with the _Pinus sinensis_,
the two being connected by a fine, double-roofed granite Chinese
gateway, inscribed “Gate for the tranquillization of the West.” The
road passing down the village street reaches the water’s edge through
this relic, one of three or four similar barriers on this high-road
to China. The Im-jin Gang, there 343 yards broad, has shallow water
and a flat sandy shore on its north side, but a range of high bluffs,
crowned with extensive old defensive works, lines the south side, the
gateway being the only break for many miles. Below these the river is
a deep green stream, navigable for craft of 14 tons for 40 miles from
its mouth. There was a still, faintly blue atmosphere, and the sails of
boats passing dreamily into the mountains over the silver water had a
most artistic effect.

There are two Chinese bridges on that road, curved slabs of stone,
supported on four-sided blocks of granite, giving one a feeling of
security, even though they have no parapets. Korean bridges are poles
laid over a river, with matting or brushwood covered with earth upon
them, and are usually full of holes. These precarious structures had
just been replaced after the summer rains. A _mapu_ usually goes ahead
to test their solidity. The region is extremely fertile, producing
fine crops of rice, wheat, barley, millet, buckwheat, cotton, sesamum,
castor oil, beans, maize, tobacco, capsicums, egg plant, peas, etc. But
Russian and American kerosene is fast displacing the vegetable oils for
burning, and is producing the same revolution in village evening life
which it has effected in the Western Islands of Scotland. I never saw
a Korean hamlet south of Phyöng-yang, however far from the main road,
into which kerosene had not penetrated.

I was obliged to halt for the night when only 10 _li_ from Song-do, all
the more regretfully, because the people were unwilling to receive a
foreigner, and the family room which I occupied, only 8 feet 6 inches
by 6 feet, was heated up to 85°, was poisoned with the smell of cakes
of rotting beans, and was so alive with vermin of every description
that I was obliged to suspend a curtain over my bed to prevent them
from falling upon it.

The next morning, in an atmosphere which idealized everything, we
reached Song-do, or Kai-söng, now the second city in the kingdom, once
the capital of Hon-jö, one of the three kingdoms which united to form
Korea, and the capital of Korea five centuries ago. A city of 60,000
people, lying to the south of Sang-dan San, with a wall ten miles
in circumference running irregularly over heights, and pierced by
double-roofed gateways, with a peaked and splintered ridge extending
from Sang-dan San to the northeast, its higher summits attaining
altitudes of from 2,000 to 3,000 feet, it has a striking resemblance to
Seoul.

The great gate is approached by an avenue of trees, and the road
is lined with _seun-tjeung-pi_, monuments to good governors and
magistrates, faithful widows, and pious sons. A wide street, its
apparent width narrowed by two rows of thatched booths, divides the
city. It was a scene of bustle, activity, and petty trade, something
like a fair. The women wear white sheets gathered round their heads and
nearly reaching their feet. The street was thronged with men in huge
hats and very white clothing, with boy bridegrooms in pink garments
and the quaint yellow hats which custom enjoins for several months
after marriage, and with mourners dressed in sackcloth from head to
foot, the head and shoulders concealed by peaked and scalloped hats,
the identity being further disguised by two-handled sackcloth screens,
held up to their eyes. In thatched stalls on low stands and on mats on
the ground were all Korean necessaries and luxuries, among which were
large quantities of English piece goods, and hacked pieces of beef
with the blood in it, Korean killed meat being enough to make any one
a vegetarian. Goats are killed by pulling them to and fro in a narrow
stream, which method is said to destroy the rank taste of the flesh;
dogs by twirling them in a noose until they are unconscious, after
which they are bled. I have already inflicted on my readers an account
of the fate of a bullock at Korean hands. It was a busy, dirty, poor,
mean scene under the hot sun.

The Song-do inns are bad, and a friend of Mr. Yi kindly lent me a
house, partly in ruins, but with two rooms which sheltered Im and
myself, and in this I spent two pleasant days in lovely weather,
Mr. Yi, who was visiting friends, escorting me to the Song-do
sights, which may be seen in one morning, and to pay visits in some
of the better-class houses. My quarters, though by comparison very
comfortable, would not at home be considered fit for the housing of
a better-class cow! But Korea has a heavenly climate for much of the
year. The squalor, dust, and rubbish in my compound and everywhere were
inconceivable, though the city is rather a “well-to-do” one. The water
supply is atrocious, offal and refuse of all kinds lying up to the
mouths of the wells. It says something for the security of Korea that a
foreign lady could safely live in a dwelling up a lonely alley in the
heart of a big city, with no attendant but a Korean soldier knowing not
a word of English, who, had he been so minded, might have cut my throat
and decamped with my money, of which he knew the whereabouts, neither
my door nor the compound having any fastening!

Points of interest in a Korean city are few, and the ancient capital is
no exception to the rule. There is a fine bronze bell with curiously
involved dragons in one of the gate towers, cast five centuries ago,
an archery ground with official pavilions on a height with a superb
view, the Governor’s _yamen_, once handsome, now ruinous, with Japanese
sentries, a dismal temple to Confucius, and a showy one to the God of
War. Outside the crowd and bustle of the city, reached by a narrow path
among prosperous ginseng farms and persimmon-embowered hamlets, are the
lonely remains of the palace of the Kings who reigned in Korea prior
to the dynasty of which the present sovereign is the representative,
and even in their forlornness they give the impression that the Korean
Kings were much statelier monarchs then than now.

The remains consist of an approach to the main platform on which the
palace stood, by two subsidiary platforms, the first reached by a
nearly obliterated set of steps. Four staircases 15 feet wide, of
thirty steps each, lead to a lofty artificial platform, faced with
hewn stone in great blocks, 14 feet high, and by rough measurement 846
feet in length. On the east side there are massive abutments. On the
west the platform broadens irregularly. At the entrance, 80 feet wide,
at the top of the steps, there are the bases of columns suggestive of
a very stately approach. The palace platform is intersected by massive
stone foundations of halls and rooms, some of large area. It is backed
by a pine-clothed knoll, and is prettily situated in an amphitheatre of
hills.

Song-do as a royal city, and as one of the so-called fortresses for
the protection of the capital, still retains many ancient privileges.
It is a bustling business town, and a great centre of the grain trade.
It has various mercantile guilds with their places of business, small
shops built round compounds with entrance gates. It makes wooden
shoes, coarse pottery and fine matting, and imports paper, which it
manufactures with sesamum oil into the oil paper for which Korea is
famous, and which is made into cloaks, umbrellas, tobacco-pouches, and
sheets for walls and floors. In answer to many inquiries, I learned
that trade had improved considerably since the war, but the native
traders now have to compete with fourteen Japanese shops, and to suffer
the presence of forty Japanese residents.

I have left until the last the commodity for which Song-do is famous,
and which is the chief source of its prosperity--ginseng. _Panax
Ginseng_ or _quinquefolia_ (?) is, as its name imports, a “panacea.” No
one can be in the Far East for many days without hearing of this root
and its virtues. No drug in the British Pharmacopœia rivals with us
the estimation in which this is held by the Chinese. It is a tonic, a
febrifuge, a stomachic, the very elixir of life, taken spasmodically or
regularly in Chinese wine by most Chinese who can afford it. It is one
of the most valuable articles which Korea exports, and one great source
of its revenue. In the steamer in which I left Chemulpo there was a
consignment of it worth $140,000. But valuable as the cultivated root
is, it is nothing to the value of the wild, which grows in Northern
Korea, a single specimen of which has been sold for £40! It is chiefly
found in the Kang-ge Mountains; but it is rare, and the search so
often ends in failure, that the common people credit it with magical
properties, and believe that only men of pure lives can find it.

The ginseng season was at its height. People talked, thought, and
dreamed ginseng, for the risks of its six or seven years’ growth were
over, and the root was actually in the factory. I went to several
ginseng farms, and also saw the different stages of the manufacturing
process, and received the same impression as in Siberia, that if
industry were lucrative, and the Korean were sure of his earnings, he
would be an industrious and even a thrifty person.

All round Song-do are carefully fenced farms on which ginseng is
grown with great care and exquisite neatness on beds 18 inches wide,
2 feet high, and neatly bordered with slates. It is sown in April,
transplanted in the following spring, and again in three years into
specially prepared ground, not recently cultivated, and which has not
been used for ginseng culture for seven years. Up to the second year
the plant has only two leaves. In the fourth year it is six inches
high with four leaves, standing out at right angles from the stalk. It
reaches maturity in the sixth or seventh year. During its growth it is
sheltered from both wind and sun by well-made reed roofs with blinds,
which are raised or lowered as may be required. When the root is taken
up it is known as “white ginseng,” and is bought by merchants, who get
it “manufactured,” about 3¹⁄₄ _catties_ of the fresh root making one
_cattie_ of “red” or commercial ginseng. The grower pays a tax of 20
cents per _cattie_, and the merchant 16 dollars a _cattie_ for the root
as received from the manufacturer.

The annual time of manufacture depends on orders given by the
Government. The growers and merchants make the most profit when the
date is early. Only two manufacturers are licensed, and one hundred
and fifty growers. The quantity to be manufactured is also limited.
In 1895 it was 15,000 _catties_ of red ginseng and 3,000 of “beards.”
The terms “beards” and “tails” are used to denote different parts of
the root, which eventually has a grotesque resemblance to a headless
man! It is possible that this likeness is the source of some of the
almost miraculous virtues which are attributed to it. Everything about
the factories is scrupulously clean, and would do credit to European
management. The row of houses used by what we should call the excisemen
are well built and comfortable. There are two officials sent from Seoul
by the Agricultural Department for the “season,” with four policemen
and two attendants, whose expenses are paid by the manufacturers,
and each step of the manufacture and the egress of the workmen are
carefully watched. Mr. Yi was sent by the Customs to make special
inquiries in connection with the revenue derived.

Ginseng is steamed for twenty-four hours in large earthen jars over
iron pots built into furnaces, and is then partially dried in a room
kept at a high temperature by charcoal. The final drying is effected
by exposing the roots in elevated flat baskets to the rays of the
bright winter sun. The human resemblance survives these processes,
but afterwards the “beards” and “tails,” used chiefly in Korea, are
cut off, and the trunk, from 3 to 4 inches long, looks like a piece
of clouded amber. These trunks are carefully picked over, and being
classified according to size, are neatly packed in small oblong baskets
containing about five _catties_ each, twelve or fourteen of these being
packed in a basket, which is waterproofed and matted, and stamped and
sealed by the Agricultural Department as ready for exportation. A
basket, according to quality, is worth from $14,000 to $20,000! In a
good season the grower makes about fifteen times his outlay. Ginseng
was a Royal monopoly, but times have changed. This medicine, which has
such a high and apparently partially deserved reputation throughout
the Far East, does not suit Europeans, and is of little account with
European doctors.

A Post Office had been established in Song-do under Korean management,
and I not only received but sent a letter, which reached its
destination safely! Buddhism still prevails to some extent in this
city, and large sums are expended upon the services of sorcerers. In
Song-do I saw, what very rarely may be seen in Seoul and elsewhere, a
“Red Door.” These are a very high honor reserved for rare instances of
faithfulness in widows, loyalty in subjects, and piety in sons. When
a widow (almost invariably of the upper class) weeps ceaselessly for
her husband, maintains the deepest seclusion, attends loyally to her
father- and mother-in-law, and spends her time in pious deeds, the
people of the neighborhood, proud of her virtues, represent them to the
Governor of the province, who conveys their recommendation to the King,
with whom it rests to confer the “Red Door.” The distinction is also
given to the family of an eminently loyal subject, who has given his
life for the King’s life.

The case of a son whose father has reached a great age is somewhat
different, and the honor is more emphatic still. His filial virtue is
shown by such methods as these. He goes every morning to his father’s
apartments, asks him how his health is, how he has slept, what he has
eaten for breakfast, and how he enjoyed the meal--if he has any fancies
for dinner, and if he shall go to the market and buy him some _tai_
(the best fish in Korea), and if he shall come back and assist him to
take a walk? The reader will observe how extremely material the pious
son’s inquiries are. Such assiduity continued during a course of years,
on being represented to the King, may receive the coveted red portal.
In former days, these matters used to be referred to the Suzerain, the
Emperor of China. In Song-do, as in the villages, a straw fringe is
frequently to be seen stretched across a door, either plain or with
bits of charcoal knotted into it. The former denotes the birth of a
girl, the latter that of a boy. A girl is not specially welcome, nor is
the occasion one of festivity, but neither is it, as in some countries,
regarded as a calamity, although, if it be a firstborn, the friends
of the father are apt to write letters of condolence to him, with the
consoling suggestion that “the next will be a boy.”

[Illustration: CHIL-SUNG MON, SEVEN STAR GATE.]




CHAPTER XXVI

THE PHYÖNG-YANG BATTLEFIELD


Glorious weather favored my departure from the ancient Korean capital.
The day’s journey lay through pretty country, small valleys, and
picturesquely shaped hills, on which the vegetation, whatever it
was, had turned to a purple as rich as the English heather blossom,
while the blue gloom of the pines emphasized the flaming reds of the
dying leafage. The villages were few and small, and cultivation was
altogether confined to the valleys. Pheasants were so abundant that the
_mapu_ pelted them out of the cover by the roadside, and wild ducks
abounded on every stream. The one really fine view of the day is from
the crest of a hill just beyond O-hung-suk Ju, where there is a second
defensive gate, with a ruinous wall carried along a ridge for some
distance on either side. The masonry and the gate-house are fine, and
the view down the wild valley beyond with its rich autumn coloring was
almost grand. It was evident that officials were expected, for the road
was being repaired everywhere--that is, spadefuls of soft soil were
being taken from the banks and roadsides, and were being thrown into
the ruts and holes to deepen the quagmire which the next rain would
produce. From four to seven men were working at each spade! A great
part of the male population had turned out; for when an official of
rank is to travel, every family in the district must provide one male
member or a substitute to put the road in order. The repairs of the
roads and bridges devolve entirely on the country people.

The following day brought a change of weather. My room had no hot
floor and the mercury at daybreak was only 20°! When we started, a
strong northwester was blowing, which increased to a gale by noon, the
same fierce gale in which at Chemulpo H.M.S. _Edgar_ lost her boat with
forty-seven men. My pony and I would have been blown over a wretched
bridge had not four men linked themselves together to support us;
and later, on the top of a precipice above a river, a gust came with
such force that the animals refused to face it, and one of them was
as nearly lost as possible. By noon it was impossible to sit on our
horses, and we fought the storm on foot. When Im lifted me from my pony
I fell down, and it took several men shouting with laughter to set me
on my feet again. When Mr. Yi and I spoke to each other, our voices had
a bobbery clatter, and sentences broke off halfway in an insane giggle.
I felt as if there were hardly another “shot in the locker,” but if a
traveller “says die,” the men lose all heart, so I summoned up all my
pluck, took a photograph after the noon halt, and walked on at a good
pace.

But the wind, with the mercury at 26°, was awful, gripping the heart
and benumbing the brain. I have not felt anything like it since I
encountered the “devil wind” on the Zagros heights in Persia. At some
distance from our destination Mr. Yi, Im, and the _mapu_ begged me to
halt, as they could no longer face it, though the accommodation for
man and beast at Tol Maru, where we put up, was the worst imaginable,
and the large village the filthiest, most squalid, and most absolutely
poverty-stricken place I saw in that land of squalor. The horses were
crowded together, and their baffled attempts at fighting were only less
hideous than the shouts and yells of the _mapu_, who were constantly
being roused out of a sound sleep to separate them.

My room was 8 feet by 6, and much occupied by the chattels of the
people, besides being alive with cockroaches and other forms of horrid
life. The dirt and discomfort in which the peasant Koreans live are
incredible.

An uninteresting tract of country succeeded, and some time was occupied
in threading long treeless valleys, cut up by stony beds of streams,
margined by sandy flats, inundated in summer, and then covered chiefly
with withered reeds, asters, and artemisia, a belated aster every now
and then displaying its untimely mauve blossom. All these and the dry
grasses and weeds of the hillsides were being cut and stacked for fuel,
even brushwood having disappeared. This work is done by small boys, who
carry their loads on wooden saddles suited to their size. That region
is very thinly peopled, only a few hamlets of squalid hovels being
scattered over it, and cultivation was rare and untidy, except in one
fine agricultural valley where wheat and barley were springing. No
animals, except a breed of pigs not larger than English terriers, were
to be seen.

One of the most dismal and squalid “towns” on this route is Shur-hung,
a long rambling village of nearly 5,000 souls, and a magistracy, built
along the refuse-covered bank of a bright, shallow stream. As if the
Crown official were the upas tree, the town with a _yamen_ is always
more forlorn than any other. In Shur-hung the large and once handsome
_yamen_ buildings are all but in ruins, and so is the Confucian temple,
visited periodically, as all such temples are, by the magistrate, who
bows before the tablet of the “most holy teacher” and offers an animal
in sacrifice.

The Korean official is the vampire which sucks the lifeblood of the
people. We had crossed the Tao-jol, the boundary between the provinces
of Kyöng-hwi and Hwang-hai, and were then in the latter. Most officials
of any standing live in Seoul for pleasure and society, leaving
subordinates in charge, and as their tenure of office is very brief,
they regard the people within their jurisdiction rather with reference
to their squeezeableness than to their capacity for improvement.

Forty Japanese soldiers found a draughty shelter within the tumble-down
buildings of the _yamen_. As I walked down the street one of them
touched me on the shoulder, asking my nationality, whence I came, and
whither I was going, not quite politely, I thought. When I reached my
room a dozen of them came and gradually closed round my door, which I
could not shut, standing almost within it. A trim sergeant raised his
cap to me, and passing on to Mr. Yi’s room, asked him where I came from
and whither I was going, and on hearing, replied, “All right,” raised
his cap to me, and departed, withdrawing his men with him. This was
one of several domiciliary visits, and though they were usually very
politely made, they suggested the query as to the right to make them,
and to whom the mastership in the land belonged. There, as elsewhere,
though the people hated the Japanese with an intense hatred, they were
obliged to admit that they were very quiet and paid for everything they
got. If the soldiers had not been in European clothes, it would not
have occurred to me to think them rude for crowding round my door.

A day’s ride through monotonous country brought us to Pong-san, where
we halted in the dirtiest hole I had till then been in. As soon as
my den was comfortably warm, myriads of house flies, blackening
the rafters, renewed a semi-torpid existence, dying in heaps in
the soup and curry, filling the well of the candlestick with their
singed bodies, and crawling in hundreds over my face. Next came the
cockroaches in legions, large and small, torpid and active, followed
by a great army of fleas and bugs, making life insupportable. To judge
from the significant sounds from the public room, no one slept all
night, and when I asked Mr. Yi after his welfare the next morning, he
uttered the one word “miserable.” Discomforts of this nature, less or
more, are inseparable from the Korean inn.

The following day, at a large village, we came upon the weekly market.
It is usual to inquire regarding the trade of a district, and as the
result of my inquiries, I assert that “trade” in the ordinary sense
has no existence in a great part of Central and Northern Korea, _i.e._
there is no exchange of commodities between one place and another, no
exports, no imports by resident merchants, and no industries supplying
more than a local demand. Such are to be found to some extent in
Southern Korea, and specially in the province of Chul-la. Apart from
Phyöng-yang, “trade” does not exist in the region through which I
travelled.

Reasons for such a state of things may be found in the debased coinage,
so bulky that a pony can only carry £10 worth of it, the entire lack
of such banking facilities as even in Western China render business
transactions easy; the general mutual distrust; prejudices against
preparing hides and working leather; caste prejudices; the general
insecurity of earnings, ignorance absolutely inconceivable, and the
existence of numerous guilds which possess practical monopolies.

Under Japanese influence, however, the superb silver _yen_ has made its
way slowly into the interior, and instead of having to carry a load of
_cash_, as on my former journey, or to be placed in great difficulties
by the want of it, this large silver coin was readily taken at all
the inns, although I did not see a single specimen of the new Korean
coinage.

“Trade,” as I became acquainted with it, is represented by Japanese
buyers, who visit the small towns and villages, buying up rice, grain,
and beans, which they forward to the ports for shipment to Japan, and
by an organized corporation of _pusang_ or pedlars, one of the most
important of the many guilds which have been among the curious features
of Korea.

There are no shops in villages, and few, where there are any, even
in small towns. It is, in fact, impossible to buy anything except on
the market-day, as no one keeps any stock of anything. At the weekly
market the usual melancholy dulness of a Korean village is exchanged
for bustle, color, and crowds of men. From an early hour in the morning
the paths leading to the officially appointed centre are thronged with
peasants bringing in their wares for sale or barter, chiefly fowls
in coops, pigs, straw shoes, straw hats, and wooden spoons, while
the main road has its complement of merchants, _i.e._ pedlars, mostly
fine, strong, well-dressed men, either carrying their heavy packs
themselves or employing porters or bulls for the purpose. These men
travel on regular circuits to the village centres, and are industrious
and respectable. A few put-up stalls, specially those who sell silks,
gauzes, cords for girdles, dress shoes, amber, buttons, silks in
skeins, small mirrors, tobacco-pouches, dress combs of tortoise-shell
for men’s topknots, tape girdles for trousers, boxes with mirror tops,
and the like. But most of the articles, from which one learns a good
deal about the necessaries and luxuries required by the Korean, are
exposed for sale on low tables or on mats on the ground, the merchant
giving the occupant of the house before which he camps a few _cash_ for
the accommodation.

On such tables are sticks of pulled candy as thick as an arm, some of
it stuffed with sesamum seeds, a sweetmeat sold in enormous quantities,
and piece goods, shirtings of Japanese and English make, Victoria
lawns, hempen cloth, Turkey-red cottons, Korean flimsy silks, dyes,
chiefly aniline, which are sold in great quantities, together with
saffron, indigo, and Chinese Prussian blue. On these also are exposed
long pipes, contraband in the capital, and Japanese cigarettes, coming
into great favor with young men and boys, with leather courier bags
and lucifer matches from the same country, wooden combs, hairpins with
tinsel heads, and, such is the march of ideas, purses for silver!
Paper, the best of the Korean manufactures, in its finer qualities
produced in Chul-la Do, is honored by stalls. Every kind is purchasable
in these markets, from the beautiful, translucent, buff, oiled paper,
nearly equal to vellum in appearance and tenacity, used for the floors
of middle- and upper-class houses, and the stout paper for covering
walls, to the thin, strong film for writing on, and a beautiful fabric,
a sort of frothy gauze, for wrapping up delicate fabrics, as well as
the coarse fibrous material, used for covering heavy packages, and
intermediate grades, applied to every imaginable purpose, such as the
making of string, almost all manufactured from the paper mulberry.

On mats on the ground are exposed straw mats, straw and string shoes,
flints for use with steel, black buckram dress hats, coarse, narrow
cotton cloth of Korean manufacture, rope muzzles for horses (much
needed), sweeping whisks, wooden _sabots_, and straw, reed, and
bamboo hats in endless variety. On these also are rough iron goods,
family cooking-pots, horseshoes, spade-shoes, door-rings, nails, and
carpenter’s tools, when of native manufacture, as rough as they can be;
and Korean roots and fruits, tasteless and untempting, great hard pears
much like raw parsnips, chestnuts, peanuts, persimmons which had been
soaked in water to take the acridity out of them, and ginger. There
were coops of fowls and piles of pheasants, brought down by falcons,
gorgeous birds, selling at six for a _yen_ (about 4d. each), and torn
and hacked pieces of bull beef.

One prominent feature of that special market was the native pottery,
both coarse and brittle ware, clay, with a pale green glaze rudely
applied, small jars and bowls chiefly, and a coarser ware, nearly black
and slightly iridescent, closely resembling iron. This pottery is of
universal use among the poor for cooking-pots, water-jars, refuse-jars,
receptacles for grain and pulse, and pickle-jars 5 feet high, roomy
enough to hold a man, two of which are a bull’s load. At that season
these jars were in great request, for the peasant world was occupied,
the men in digging up a great hard white radish weighing from 2 to 4
lbs., and the women in washing its great head of partially blanched
leaves, which, after being laid aside in these jars in brine, form one
great article of a Korean peasant’s winter diet.

Umbrella hats, oiled paper, hat-covers, pounded capsicums, rice, peas,
and beans, bean curd, and other necessaries of Korean existence,
were there, but business was very dull, and the crowds of people
were nearly as quiet as the gentle bulls which stood hour after hour
among them. Late in the afternoon, the pedlars packed up their wares
and departed _en route_ for the next centre, and a good deal of hard
drinking closed the day. I have been thus minute in my description
because the peripatetic merchant really represents the fashion of
Korean trade, and the wares which are brought to market are both the
necessaries and luxuries of Korean existence.

The reader will agree with me that, except for a certain amount of
insight into Korean customs which can only be gained by mixing freely
with Koreans, the journey from Seoul to Phyöng-yang tends to monotony,
though at the time Mr. Yi’s brightness, intelligence, sense of fun, and
unvarying good-nature made it very pleasant. Among the few features
of interest on the road are the “Hill Towns,” of which three are
striking objects, specially one on the hill opposite to the magistracy
of Pyeng-san, the hilltop being surrounded by a battlemented wall two
miles in circuit, enclosing a tangled thicket containing a few hovels
and the remains of some granaries. Unwalled towns are supposed to
possess such strongholds, with stores of rice and _soy_, as refuges in
times of invasion or rebellion, but as they have not been required for
three centuries, they are now ruinous. The one on a high hill above
Sai-nam, where the last Chinese gate occurs, is imposing from its fine
gateway and the extent of ground it encloses.

Two days before reaching Phyöng-yang we crossed the highest pass on
the road, and by a glen wooded with such deciduous trees, shrubs, and
trailers as ash, elæagnus, euonymus, hornbeam, oak, lime, _Acanthopanax
ricinifolia_, actinidia with scarlet berries, clematis, _Ampelopsis
Veitchii_, etc., descended to the valley of the Nam-chhon, a broad but
shallow stream which joins the Tai-döng. On the right bank, where the
stream, crossed by a dilapidated bridge, is 128 yards wide, the town
of Whang Ju is picturesquely situated, 36 _li_ from the sea, at the
base of two low fir-crowned hills, which terminate in cliffs above the
Nam-chhon.

A battlemented wall 9 _li_ in circumference, with several fine towers
and gateways, encloses the town, and being carried along the verge of
the cliff and over the downs and ups of the hills, has a very striking
appearance. It was a singularly attractive view. The Korean sky was
at its bluest, and the winding Nam-chhon was seen in glimpses here
and there through the broad fertile plain in reaches as blue, and the
broken sparkle of its shallow waters flashed in sapphire gleams against
the gray rock and the gray walls of the city. On the wall, and grouped
in the handsome Water Gate, were a number of Japanese soldiers watching
a crowd of Koreans spearing white fish with three-pronged forks from
rafts made of two bundles of reeds with a cask lashed between them, and
from the bridge the ruinous state of the walls and towers could not be
seen.

Whang Ju is memorable to me as being the first place I saw which had
suffered from the ravages of recent war. There the Japanese came upon
the Chinese, but there was no fighting at that point. Yet whatever
happened has been enough to reduce a flourishing town with an estimated
population of 30,000 souls to one of between 5,000 and 6,000, and to
destroy whatever prosperity it had.

I passed through the Water Gate into a deplorable scene of desolation.
There were heaps of ruins, some blackened by fire, others where the
houses had apparently collapsed “all of a heap,” with posts and rafters
sticking out of it. There are large areas of nothing but this and
streets of deserted houses, sadder yet, with doors and windows gone for
the bivouac fires of the Japanese, and streets where roofless mud walls
alone were standing. In some parts there were houses with windows gone
and torn paper waving from their walls, and then perhaps an inhabited
house stood solitary among the deserted or destroyed, emphasizing the
desolation. Some of the destruction was wrought by the Chinese, some by
the Japanese, and much resulted from the terrified flight of more than
20,000 of the inhabitants.

North of Whang Ju are rich plains of productive, stoneless, red
alluvium, extending towards the Tai-döng for nearly 40 miles. On these
there were villages partly burned and partly depopulated and ruinous,
and tracts of the superb soil had passed out of cultivation owing to
the flight of the cultivators, and there was a total absence of beasts,
the splendid bulls of the region having perished under their loads _en
route_ for Manchuria.

It was a dreary journey that day through partially destroyed villages,
relapsing plains, and slopes denuded of every stick which could be
burned. There were no wayfarers on the roads, no movement of any kind,
and as it grew dusk the _mapu_ were afraid of tigers and robbers,
and we halted for the night at the wretched hamlet of Ko-moun Tari,
where I obtained a room with delay and difficulty, partly owing to the
unwillingness of the people to receive a foreigner. They had suffered
enough from foreigners, truly!

The concluding day’s march was through a pleasant country, though
denuded of trees, and the approach to a great city was denoted by
the number of villages, dæmon shrines, and refreshment booths on the
road, the increased traffic, and eventually, by a long avenue of stone
tablets, some of them under highly decorated roofs, recording the
virtues of Phyöng-yang officials for 250 years!

The first view of Phyöng-yang delighted me. The city has a magnificent
situation, taken advantage of with much skill, and at a distance merits
the epithet “imposing.” It was a glorious afternoon. All the low ranges
which girdle the rich plain through which the Tai-döng winds were blue
and violet, melting into a blue haze, the crystal waters of the river
were bluer still, brown-sailed boats drifted lazily with the stream,
and above it the gray mass of the city rose into a dome of unclouded
blue.

It is built on lofty ground rising abruptly from the river, above which
a fine wall climbs picturesquely over irregular, but always ascending
altitudes, till it is lost among the pines of a hill which overhangs
the Tai-döng. The great double-roofed Tai-döng _Mön_ (river gate),
decorated pavilions on the walls, the massive curled roofs of the
Governor’s _yamen_, a large Buddhist monastery and temple on a height,
and a fine temple to the God of War, prominent objects from a distance,
prepare one for something quite apart from the ordinary meanness of a
Korean city.

Crossing the clear flashing waters of the Tai-döng with our ponies in
a crowded ferryboat, we found ourselves in the slush of the dark Water
Gate, at all hours of the day crowded with water-carriers. There are no
wells in the city, the reason assigned for the deficiency being that
the walls enclose a boat-shaped area, and that the digging of wells
would cause the boat to sink! The water is carried almost entirely in
American kerosene tins. I lodged at the house of a broker, and had nice
clean rooms for myself and Im, quite quiet, and with a separate access
from the street. It was truly a luxury to have roof, walls, and floor
papered with thick oiled paper much resembling varnished oak, but there
was no hot floor, and I had to rely for warmth solely on the “fire
bowl.”

Taking a most diverting boy as my guide, I went outside the city
wall, through some farming country to a Korean house in a very
tumble-to-pieces compound, which he insisted was the dwelling of the
American missionaries; but I only found a Korean family, and there were
no traces of foreign occupation in glass panes let into the paper of
the windows and doors. Nothing daunted, the boy pulled me through a
smaller compound, opened a door, and pushed me into what was manifestly
posing as a foreign room, gave me a chair, took one himself, and
offered me a cigarette!

I had reached the right place. It was a very rough Korean room, about
the length and width of a N.W. Railway saloon carriage. It had three
camp-beds, three chairs, a trunk for a table, and a few books and
writing materials, as well as a few articles of male apparel hanging on
the mud walls. I waited more than an hour, every attempt at departure
being forcibly as well as volubly resisted by the urchin, imagining
the devotion which could sustain educated men year after year in such
surroundings, and then they came in hilariously, and we had a most
pleasant evening. I shall say more of them later. It was a weird walk
through ruins which looked ghostly in the starlight to my curious
quarters in the densest part of the city by the Water Gate, where at
intervals through the night I heard the beat of the sorcerer’s drum and
the shrieking chant of the _mu-tang_.

It may be taken for granted that every Korean winter day is splendid,
but the following day in Phyöng-yang was heavenly. Three Koreans called
on me in the morning, very courteous persons, but as Mr. Yi and I had
parted company for a time on reaching the city, the interpretation was
feeble, and we bowed and smiled, and smiled and bowed with tedious
iteration without coming to much mutual understanding, and I was glad
when the time came for seeing the city and battlefield under Mr.
Moffett’s guidance.

On such an incomparable day everything looked at its very best, but
also at its very worst, for the brilliant sunshine lit up desolations
sickening to contemplate,--a prosperous city of 80,000 inhabitants
reduced to decay and 15,000--four-fifths of its houses destroyed,
streets and alleys choked with ruins, hill slopes and vales once
thick with Korean crowded homesteads, covered with gaunt hideous
remains--fragments of broken walls, _kang_ floors, _kang_ chimneys,
indefinite heaps in which roofs and walls lay in unpicturesque
confusion--and still worse, roofs and walls standing, but doors and
windows all gone, suggesting the horror of human faces with their eyes
put out. Everywhere there were the same scenes, miles of them, and very
much of the desolation was charred and blackened, shapeless, hideous,
hopeless, under the mocking sunlight.

Phyöng-yang was not taken by assault; there was no actual fighting in
the city, both the Chinese who fled and the Japanese who occupied posed
as the friends of Korea, and all this wreck and ruin was brought about
not by enemies, but by those who professed to be fighting to give her
independence and reform. It had gradually come to be known that the
“_wojen_ (dwarfs) did not kill Koreans,” hence many had returned. Some
of these unfortunate fugitives were picking their way among the heaps,
trying to find indications which might lead them to the spots where
all they knew of home once existed; and here and there, where a family
found their walls and roof standing, they put a door and window into
one room and lived in it among the ruins of five or six.

When the Japanese entered and found that the larger part of the
population had fled, the soldiers tore out the posts and woodwork, and
often used the roofs also for fuel, or lighted fires on house floors,
leaving them burning, when the houses took fire and perished. They
looted the property left by the fugitives during three weeks after the
battle, taking even from Mr. Moffett’s house $700 worth, although his
servant made a written protest, the looting being sanctioned by the
presence of officers. Under these circumstances the prosperity of the
most prosperous city in Korea was destroyed. If such are the results of
war in the “green tree,” what must they be in the “dry”?

During the subsequent occupation the Japanese troops behaved well, and
all stores obtained in the town and neighborhood were scrupulously paid
for. Intensely as the people hated them, they admitted that quiet and
good order had been preserved, and they were very apprehensive that
on their withdrawal they would suffer much from the _Kun-ren-tai_,
a regiment of Koreans drilled and armed by the Japanese, and these
had already begun to rob and beat the people, and to defy the civil
authorities. The main street on my second visit had assumed a bustling
appearance. There was much building up and pulling down, for Japanese
traders had obtained all the eligible business sites, and were
transforming the small, dark, low, Korean shops into large, light,
airy, dainty Japanese erections, well stocked with Japanese goods, and
specially with kerosene lamps of every pattern and price, the Defries
and Hinckes patents being unblushingly infringed.

Phyöng-yang has a truly beautiful situation on the right or north bank
of the clear, bright Tai-döng, 400 yards wide at the ferry. It occupies
an undulating plateau, and its wall, parallel for two miles and a half,
rises from the river level at the stately Water Gate, and following its
windings, mounts escarped hills to a height of over 400 feet, turning
westwards at the crest of the cliff at a sharp angle marked by a
pavilion, one of several, and follows the western ridge of the plateau,
where it falls steeply down to a fertile rolling plain where the one
real battle of the late war was fought.

This wall, which is in excellent repair, is a loopholed and
battlemented structure, 20 feet high, pierced by several gates with
gate towers. The city, large as it was, was once much larger, for the
old wall on the west side encloses a far larger area than the modern
one. The walk over the grassy undulations within the wall and up to
the northern pine-clothed summit is entrancing, and the views, even in
winter, are exquisite--eastwards over a rich plain to the mountains
through which the Tai-döng cuts its way, or northwest to one of its
affluents and the great battlefield over which in 1593 the joint forces
of Chinese and Koreans poured to recover Phyöng-yang from the Japanese,
or seawards where the clear bright waters wind through fertile and
populous country, or the hilly area within the walls where pine-clothed
knolls conceal the devastations, and the Governor’s _yamen_, temples,
and monasteries make a goodly show.

Between the city and the Chinese frontier is the largest and richest
plain in Korea; to the east where the violet shadows lay are the
valleys of the two branches of the Tai-döng, rich in silk, iron, and
cotton, while within 10 miles there are at least five coal-mines,[37]
and for all produce there is easy communication with the sea, 36
miles distant, for vessels of light draught, by means of the river
which flows below the city wall. Timber is rafted down the Tai-döng
in summer. The Peking road, which I had followed thus far, and which
for centuries has linked Phyöng-yang with the outer world and the
capital, is another element in the former prosperity of the city. It
was to photograph for the widow and family of General Tso of Mukden,
the commander of the best-disciplined and best-equipped cavalry brigade
in the Chinese army, the scenes connected with his last days and death
that I visited the hill within the wall.

The river wall of Phyöng-yang, after 2 miles of an undulating ascent,
turns sharply at a pavilion, outside of which the ground falls
precipitously, to rise again in a knife-like ridge, the three highest
points of which are crowned with Chinese forts. From this pavilion the
wall, following the lie of the hill, slopes rapidly down to a very
picturesque and narrow gate, the _Chil-sung Mön_ or Seven Star Gate,
after which it trends in a northwesterly direction to the _Potong Mön_.

In the pine wood, at the highest part of the angle formed by the
wall, General Tso had built three mud forts or camps with walls 10
feet high. The ground under the trees is dotted with the stone-lined
cooking holes of his men, blackened with the smoke of their last
fires. On the afternoon of the 15th of September, 1894, General Tso
and his force, which mustered 5,000 men when it left Mukden, but must
have been greatly diminished by desertion and death, made his fatal
sally, passing through the _Chil-sung Mön_ and down the steep zigzag
descent below it to the plain, meeting his death probably within 300
yards of the gate. The Koreans say that some of his men took up the
body, but were shot by the Japanese while removing it, and that it was
lost in the slaughter which ensued. A neat obelisk, railed round, was
erected by the Japanese at the supposed spot, bearing on one face the
inscription:--

 Tso Pao-kuei, commander-in-chief of the Fengtien division. Place of
 death.

And on the other----

 Killed while fighting with the Japanese troops at Phyöng-yang.

A graceful tribute to their ablest foe.

General Tso’s troops, demoralized by his death, sought refuge
everywhere from the deadly fire of the Japanese, a part flying back
to their forts within the wall, while many, probably blinded and
desperate, rode along the pine woods which densely cover the broken
ground outside, by a path along a wide dry moat, which, three weeks
later, when Mr. Moffett returned, was piled with the dead bodies of
their horses.

In the bright moonlight night which followed that day, the Japanese
stormed and took by assault the three Chinese forts on the three
summits of the ridge, which were the key of the position, enabling them
to throw their shell into the Chinese forts and camps within the wall.
The beautiful pavilion at the angle of the wall is much shattered, and
big fragments of shell are embedded in its pillars and richly carved
woodwork. So desperately hurried was the flight of the vanquished
from the last fort which held out, that they were mown down in numbers
as they ran down the steep hill, falling face foremost with their
outstretched hands clutching the earth.

All was then lost, and why that doomed army, numbering then perhaps
12,000 men, did not surrender unconditionally, I cannot imagine.
During the night, abandoning guns and all war material, the remains of
Tso’s brigade and all the infantry and unwounded men passed through
the deserted and silent city, surged out of the _Potong Mön_, crossed
a shallow stream, and emerged upon a plain girdled by low hills, and
intersected by the Peking road, the eastern extremity being occupied by
some Chinese forts and breastworks. Tso’s cavalry attempted to cross
the plain and gain the shelter of some low hills, while great numbers
of the infantry took to the Peking road.

The horrors of that night will never be accurately known. The battle of
Phyöng-yang was lost and won when the forts were taken. What remained
was less of a battle than a massacre. Before the morning, this force,
the flower of the Chinese army as to drill and equipment, had perished,
those who escaped never reappearing as an organized body. It is
estimated that from 2,000 to 4,000 men were slain, with thousands of
horses and bulls, the cavalry being literally mown down in hundreds,
and lying, men and horses, heaped “in mounds.” For the Japanese had
girdled the plain with a ring of fire. Mr. Moffett, who was there three
weeks later, described the scene even then as one of “indescribable
horror.” Still, there were “mounds” of men and horses stiffened in the
death-agony, many having tried vainly to extricate themselves from the
pile above them. There were blackened corpses in hundreds lying along
the Peking road, ditches filled up with bodies of men and animals,
fields sprinkled with them, and rifles, muskets, paper umbrellas, fans,
coats, hats, swords belts, scabbards, cartridge boxes, sleeves, and
everything that could be cast away in a desperate flight strewing the
ground. Numbers of the wounded crept into the deserted houses and
died there, some of the bodies showing indications of suicide from
agony, and throughout this mass of human relics which lay blackening
and festering in the hot sun, dogs, left behind by their owners, were
holding high carnival. Even in my walks over the battlefield, though
the grain of another year had ripened upon it, I saw human skulls,
spines with ribs, spines with the pelvis attached, arms and hands,
hats, belts, and scabbards.

On a lofty knoll within the wall, the Japanese have erected a fine
monolith to the memory of the 168 men they lost. They turned the
temple of the God of War into a hospital, and there, _cela va sans
dire_, their wounded were admirably treated, and in another building
the Chinese wounded were carefully attended to, though naturally not
till many of them had died of their wounds on the battlefield. A
ghastly retribution followed the neglect to bury the Chinese dead, for
typhus fever broke out, and its ravages among the Japanese troops may
be partially estimated by the long lines of graves in the military
cemetery at Chemulpo.

Outside the wall, in beautifully broken ground, roughly wooded with
the _Pinus sinensis_, there are still bullets in the branches, many of
which were splintered by the iron hail, and the temple at the tomb of
Kit-ze, the founder of Korean civilization, must have been the centre
of a deadly fight, for its woodwork is riddled with bullets and damaged
by shell, and on its floor are great dark stains, where, when the fight
was over, the Japanese wounded lay in pools of blood.

At some points, specially at the mud forts by the ferry, the Chinese
made a very determined stand for ten hours, so that the Japanese troops
wavered, and were only recovered by a gallant dash made by General
Oshima. Probably the battle of Phyöng-yang decided the fate of the
campaign.

[Illustration: ALTAR AT TOMB OF KIT-ZE.]

Mr. Yi found an old book in eighteen vols. for sale, which gives a
history of this city. Most Korean matters are lost in obscurity
after one or two centuries, but the story of Phyöng-yang takes a
bold backward leap and deals fearlessly with the events of centuries
B.C. Kit-ze, whose fine reputed tomb and temples in the wood are
still regarded with so much reverence that a stone tablet on the road
below warns equestrians to dismount in passing so sacred a place, and
who is said to have emigrated from China in 1122 B.C., and to have
founded a dynasty which lasted for seven centuries, made Phyöng-yang
his capital. The temple at his reputed grave, though full of bullets,
is in admirable repair, and its rich decorations have lately been
renovated, a phenomenon in Korea. Near the city is the standard of land
measurement which he introduced, illustrated by ditches and paths cut,
it is said, by himself.

The temple to the God of War at the foot of the hill is perhaps the
finest in Korea. Frescoes, as in the temple to the same god outside the
South Gate of Seoul, but on a far grander scale, cover the walls of the
corridors of one of the courtyards, and the gigantic figures round the
altar, with the sacrificial utensils, hangings, and dresses, are costly
and magnificent. Not far from this is a large and wealthy Buddhist
monastery.


FOOTNOTES:

[37] There are five coal-mines at distances varying from 10 to 30
_li_ from Phyöng-yang, those of Yang-tang, 15 _li_ away, producing
the best quality. With rich iron ore close to the river bank at Kai
Chhön, about 36 _li_ off, the elements of prosperity are ready to hand.
The “coal-owners” have no proper appliances for working the coal,
relying chiefly on Korean axes, and the “output” is very small. Much
money has been spent in trying to get the coal, and in two mines they
cannot proceed any farther with their present tools. The difficulties
of transport are great, and there is no demand for any quantity in
Phyöng-yang itself, but the mineral is there in abundance and of good
quality, and only awaits capital and enterprise. A tax of 5 per cent.
is levied on all coal sent away from the mines. The total export for
1895 was only 652 tons, valued at 4 dols. 20 cts. per ton (9s.).




CHAPTER XXVII

NORTHWARD HO!


For the northern journey simple preparations only were needed,
consisting of the purchase of candles and two blankets for Im, in
having two pheasants cooked, in dispensing with one pony, leaving us
the moderate allowance of two baggage animals, and in depositing most
of my money with Mr. Moffett. For there were rumors of robbers on the
road, and Mr. Yi left his fine clothes and elegant travelling gear also
behind.

On a brilliant morning (and when are Korean mornings not brilliant?),
passing through the gate out of which General Tso made his last sally,
and down the steep declivity on which it opens, we travelled for a
time along the An Ju road, skirting the base of the hill on which the
Chinese cavalry made their desperate attack on an intrenched position,
and near the ruins of two intrenched camps, where they fell in
hundreds before the merciless fire of the enemy, and where human bones
were still lying about. But where Death reaped that ghastly harvest
magnificent grain crops had recently been secured, and the mellow
sunlight shone on miles of stubble.

Shortly we turned off on a road untouched by the havoc of war, and
saw no more of the gaunt ruins or charred remains of cottages. In
that pleasant region ranges of hills with pines on their lower slopes
girdle valleys of rich stoneless alluvium, producing abundantly cotton,
tobacco, caster oil, wheat, barley, peas, beans, and most especially,
the red and white millet. Wherever a lateral valley descends upon the
one through which the road passes, there is a village of thatched
houses, pretty enough at a distance and embowered in fruit trees, while
clumps of pines, oaks, elms, and zelkawas denote the burial-places
of its dead, who are the guardians of the only fine timber which is
suffered to exist.

[Illustration: RUSSIAN SETTLER’S HOUSE.]

The hamlets along the road were cheerfully busy. Millet was stacked in
the village roadways, leaving only room for one laden animal to pass at
a time, and as all the threshing of rice and grain is done with double
flails also in the village street, one actually rides over the threshed
product. The red or large millet is nearly as useful to the Korean as
is the bamboo to the Chinese. Its stalks furnish fuel, material for
mats and thick woven fences, and even for houses, for in Phyöng-an Do
the walls are formed of bundles of millet stalks 8 feet high for the
uprights, across which single stalks are laid, the interstices being
filled up with mud.

After two days of somewhat monotonous prettiness, beyond Shou-yang-yi
the country became really beautiful. Some of the larger valleys were
specially attractive, with abundance of fruit and other deciduous trees
below the dark _Pinus sinensis_ on the hill slopes, and there were
plenty of large villages with a general look of prosperity, everything,
clothing included, being much cleaner than usual. There were fine
views of lofty dog-tooth peaks, and of serrated ranges running east
and west. Nearly every valley has its bright, rapid stream, on which
the hills descend on one side in abrupt and much caverned limestone
cliffs, the other side being level and fertile. The people there, and
doubtless everywhere, were taken up entirely with their own concerns,
the new system of taxation under which a fixed tax in money is levied
on the assessed value of the land meeting with their approval. Events
in Seoul had no interest for them. The recent murder of the Queen and
the imprisonment of the King did not concern them, as there were no
effects of either on their circumstances. After crossing the pass of
Miriok Yang, 816 feet in altitude, in a romantic region, we entered
poorer country with stony soil, often piled with large shingle by the
violence of streams then perfectly dry.

By misdirection, misunderstanding, or complexity or complete
illegibility of the track, we spent much of the day in losing and
retracing our way, scrambling up steep rock-ladders, etc., and when we
reached Kai-pang after dusk we were for some time refused admission
to the inn. The owner said he could not take in any one travelling
with so many _mapu_ (four) and a soldier. He was terrified. He said
we should go away in the morning without paying him, and should beat
him when he asked to be paid! However, the _mapu_ gave me such an
excellent character that at last he consented, and I had an excellent
room,--that is, the walls and roof were cream-washed, which gave it a
look of cleanliness. The timid innkeeper was old, and this brought out
the fact that when a local magistrate has aged parents, it is customary
for him to invite to an entertainment everybody in his district between
the ages of 60 and 100, and it is usual for the old men to take their
oldest grandsons with them as testimonies to their old age. As every
guest has to be accompanied fittingly, the company often numbers 200.

At Ka-chang and elsewhere the pigsties are much more solid than the
houses, being regular log cabins with substantial roofs for the
protection of their inmates from tigers, or in that neighborhood
from wolves (?). These pigs, of which every country family in Korea
possesses some, are of an absurdly small black breed, a full-grown
animal not weighing more than 26 lbs.

During the two days’ journey from the market-place of Sian-chöng, we
passed the magistracies of Cha-san and Un-san, ferrying the Tai-döng
just beyond Cha-san, where it is a fine stream 317 yards broad,
and is said by the ferrymen to be 47 feet deep. All that region is
well peopled and fertile. There are no resident _yang-bans_ in the
province of Phyöng-an. Gold is obtained by a simple process all round
the country, specially at Keum-san. At Wol-po, a prettily situated
village, and elsewhere, a quantity of the coarser descriptions of paper
is made. Paper and tobacco were the goods that were on the move, bound
for Phyöng-yang.

Paper is used for a greater variety of purposes in Korea than anywhere
else, and its toughness and durability render it invaluable. The
coarser sorts are made from old rags and paper, the finer from the
paper mulberry. Paper is the one article of Korean manufacture which
is exported in any quantity to China, where it is used for some of the
same purposes.

Oil paper about a sixth of an inch in thickness is pasted on the
floors instead of carpets or mats. It bears washing, and takes a
high polish from dry rubbing. In the Royal Palaces, where two tints
are used carefully, it resembles oak parquet. It is also used for
walls. A thinner quality is made into the folding, conical hat-covers
which every Korean carries in his sleeve, and into waterproof cloaks,
coats, and baggage covers. A very thick kind of paper made of several
thicknesses beaten together is used for trunks, which are strong enough
to hold heavy articles. Lanterns, tobacco-pouches, and fans are made
of paper, and the Korean wooden latticed windows from the palace to
the hovel are “glazed” with a thin, white, tough variety, which is
translucent. Much prized, however, were my photographic glass plates
when cleaned. Many a joyful householder let one into his window, giving
himself an opportunity of amusement and _espionage_ denied to his
neighbors.

The day’s journey from Ka-chang to Tok Chhön is through very
attractive scenery with grand mountain views. After crossing a low
but severe pass, we came down upon a large affluent of the Tai-döng,
which for want of a name I designate as the Ko-mop-so, flowing as
a full-watered, green stream between lofty cliffs of much caverned
limestone, fantastically buttressed, and between hills which throw out
rocky spurs, terminating or thinning down into high limestone walls,
resembling those of ruinous fortifications.

Again losing the way and our time, a struggle over a rough pass brought
us in view of the Tai-döng, with the characteristics of its mountain
course, long rapids with glints of foam and rocks, long reaches of
deep, still, slow-gliding jagged translucent green water broad and
deep, making constant abrupt turns, and by its volume suggesting great
powers of destructiveness when it is liberated from its mountain
barriers. In about a fortnight it would be frozen for the winter.
Diamond-flashing in the fine breeze, below noble cliffs and cobalt
mountains, across which cloud shadows were sailing in indigo, under
a vault of cloud-flecked blue, that view was one of those dreams of
beauty which become a possession for ever.

From that pass the road, if it can be called such, is shut in with the
Tai-döng for 30 _li_. In some places there is not room even for the
narrowest bridle track, and the ponies scramble as they may over the
rough boulders which margin the water, and climb the worn, steep, and
rocky steps, often as high as their own knees, by which the break-neck
track is taken over the rocky spurs which descend on the river. It is
one of the worst pieces of road I ever encountered, and it was not
wonderful that we did not meet a single traveller, and that there
should be only about nine a year! We made by our utmost efforts only
a short mile an hour, and it took us five hours of this severe work
to reach the wretched hamlet of Huok Kuri, a few hovels dumped down
among heaps of stones and great boulders, some of which served as backs
for the huts. Poverty-stricken, filthy, squalid, the few inhabitants
subsisted entirely on red millet! Poor Mr. Yi, who had had a wakeful
night owing to vermin, said woefully as he dismounted stiffly, “Sleepy,
tired, cold, hungry,”--and there was nothing to eat, and little for
the ponies either, which may have been the reason that they got up a
desperate fight, of which they bore the traces for some days.

[Illustration: UPPER TAI-DONG.]

The track continued shut in by the high mountains which line the
Tai-döng till within a mile of Tok Chhön, forcing the ponies to
climb worn rock-ladders, or to pick a perilous way among sharp-pointed
rocks. I had not thought that Korea could produce anything so emphatic!
As the road occasionally broke up in face of some apparently impassable
spur, we occasionally got into impassable places, and lost time so
badly that we were benighted when little more than halfway, but as
there were no inhabitants we pushed on as a matter of necessity. When
we got to better going the _mapu_, inspired by the double terror of
robbers and wild animals, hurried on the ponies, yelling as they drove,
and by the time we reached the Tok Chhön ferry a young moon had risen,
and the mountains in shadow, and the great ferryboat full of horses,
men in white, and bulls, in relief against the silvered water, made a
beautiful night scene. I sent on the ponies, and Im to prepare my room,
fully expecting comfort, as at Phyöng-yang, for though I could never
find anybody who had been at Tok Chhön, it was always spoken of as a
sort of metropolis.

It is indeed a magistracy, with a remarkably ruinous _yamen_ and a
market-place, and is the chief town of a very large region. It is
entered from the river by stepping-stones, through abominable slush,
by a long narrow street, from which we were directed on and on till we
came to a wide _place_, where the inns of the town are. There in the
moonlight a great masculine crowd had collected, and in the middle of
it were our _mapu_, with the loads still on their ponies, raging at
large, and Im rushing hither and thither like a madman. For they had
been refused accommodation, and every door had been barred against them
on the ground that I was a foreigner! They said, truly or falsely, that
no foreigner had ever profaned Tok Chhön by his presence, that they
lived in peace, and did not want to be “implicated with a foreigner”
(all foreigners being Japanese). It is most disagreeable to force
oneself in even the slightest degree on any one, but I had been twelve
hours in the saddle, it was 8 P.M., there was snow on the ground, and
it was freezing hard! The yard door of one inn was opened a chink for
a moment, our men rushed for it, but it was at once barred, and we were
all again left standing in the street, the centre of a crowd which
increased every moment.

Our men eventually forced open the door of one inn and got their ponies
in. Then the paper was torn off two doors, and Im was visible against
the light from within tearing about like a black dæmon. We had then
stood like statues for two hours with our feet in freezing slush, the
great crowd preserving a ring round us, staring stolidly, but not
showing any hostility. At last Im appeared at an open door, waving my
chair, and we got into a high, dark lumber-room; but the crowd was too
quick for us, and came tumbling in behind us till the place was full.
Then the landlord closed the doors, but they were smashed in, and he
had no better luck when he weakly besought the people to look at him
and not at the stranger, for his entreaty only produced an ebullition
of Korean wit, by no means complimentary. An official from the _yamen_
arrived and inquired if I had any complaint to make, but I had none,
and he sat down and took a prolonged stare on his own account, not
making any attempt to disperse the crowd.

So I sat facing the door, Mr. Yi not far off smoking endless
cigarettes, while Im battled for a room, after one he had secured had
its doors broken down by the crowd. I sat for two hours longer in that
cold, ruinous, miserable place, two front and three back doorways
filled up with men, the whole male population of Tok Chhön, and, never
moved a muscle or showed any sign of dissatisfaction! Some sat on the
doorsill, little men were on the shoulders of big ones, all, inside and
outside, clamoring at once.

The situation might have been serious had a European man been with me,
and the experiences of Mr. Campbell of the Consular Service, at Kapsan
might have been repeated. No Englishman could have kept his temper in
such circumstances from 8 P.M. till midnight. He would certainly have
knocked somebody down, and then there would have been a fight. The
ill-bred curiosity tires but does not annoy me, though it exceeded all
bounds that night. Fortunately for me, a Korean gentleman is taught
from his earliest boyhood that he must never lose his temper, and that
it is a degradation to him to touch an inferior, therefore he must
never strike a servant or one of the lower orders.

At midnight, probably weary of our passivity, and anxious for sleep,
the inn people consented to give me a room in the back-yard if I
did not object to one “prepared for sacrifice,” and containing the
ancestral tablets. The crowd then filled the back-yard, and attempted
to pour into my room, when Im’s sorely-tried patience gave way for only
the second time, and he knocked people down right and left. This, and
the contents of a fire bowl which was upset in the scrimmage, helped to
scatter the crowd, but it was there again at daylight, attempting to
enter every time Im opened the door!

The “room prepared for sacrifice” in aspect was a small barn, fearfully
dirty and littered with rubbish, and bundles of rags, rope, and old
shoes were tucked away among the beams and rafters. My camp-bed cut
it exactly in half. In the inner half there was a dusty table, and
behind it on a black stand a dusty black shrine, at the back of which
was a four-leaved screen covered with long strips of paper, on which
were poems in praise of the deceased. In front, dividing the room, and
falling from the roof to the floor, was a curtain made of two widths
of very dirty foreign calico. Among the poor, instead of setting food
before the ancestral shrine twice or thrice daily during the three
years of mourning for a parent, it is only placed there twice a month.
In a small white wooden tablet within the shrine popular belief places
the residence of the third soul of the deceased, as I have mentioned
before.

I spent two days at Tok Chhön. Properly speaking, the Tai-döng is never
navigable to that point, owing to many and dangerous rapids, and any
idea of the possibility of this highly picturesque stream becoming “a
great commercial highway” may be utterly dismissed. Small boats can
ascend it at all seasons to Mou-chin Tai, about 140 _li_ lower down,
and during two summer months, when the water is high, a few with much
difficulty get up to Tok Chhön, and even a few _li_ farther, and at the
same season rafts descend from the forests of the Yung-wön district,
from 30 to 40 _li_ higher; but owing to severe rapids, shallows, and
sandbanks which shift continually, the river is not really navigable
higher than Phyöng-yang, and all commercial theories built upon it
are totally chimerical. For 30 _li_ above Tok Chhön the river scenery
is far grander than below, the perpendicular walls of limestone rock
rising from 800 to 1,000 feet, with lofty mountains above them, the
peaks of which, even so early as the end of November, were crested with
new-fallen snow. I had been assured in Phyöng-yang that boats could be
hired at Tok Chhön, and I had planned to descend the river; but there
are no boats, except a few ferry scows, higher than Mou-chin Tai.

Tok Chhön and its district are lamentably poor. The people said that
the war had made the necessaries of life dearer, and that they had only
the same produce to barter or buy with. The reforms which were being
carried out farther south had not reached that region, and “squeezing”
was still carried on by the officials. Rice, the ordinary staff of
Korean life, is brought from An Ju, but is used only by the rich,
_i.e._ the officials. The poor live on large and small millet. Potatoes
and wheat are grown, but the soil is poor and stony. A little trade,
chiefly in dried fish and seaweed, is done with Wön-san. A few silk
lenos and gauzes of very poor quality are made, the industry having
been introduced by the Chinese. Piece goods are only a few _cash_
dearer than at Phyöng-yang. Those displayed on the market-day were
nearly all Japanese. It was the dullest market I have seen. The pedlars
carried away nearly as much as they brought. The country is absolutely
denuded of wood. There are no deciduous trees, and the region owes its
few groves of dwarfed and distorted pines to the horseshoe graves on
the hillsides. A _yamen_ which only hangs together from force of habit,
a Confucian temple, and a Buddhist temple on a height are the only
noteworthy buildings.

The district magistrate returned while I was in Tok Chhön, and the
people showed a degree of interest in the event. Runners lined the
river bank by the ferry, blowing horns, forty men in black gauze coats
over their white ones, and a few singing girls met his chair and ran
with it to the _yamen_, and a few men looked on apathetically. A more
squalid retinue could not be imagined.

Some magistrates had a thousand of such retainers paid by this
impoverished country. In a single province, there were at that time
44 district mandarins, with an average staff of 400 men each, whose
sole duties were those of police and tax-collecting, their food
alone, at the rate of two dollars per month, costing $392,400 a
year.[38] This army of 17,600 men, not receiving a “living wage,”
“squeezed” on its own account the peasant, who in Korea has neither
rights nor privileges, except that of being the ultimate sponge. As
an illustration of the methods of proceeding I give the case of a
village in a southern province. Telegraph poles were required, and the
Provincial Governor made a requisition of 100 _cash_ on every house.
The local magistrate increased it to 200, and his runners to 250,
which was actually paid by the people, the runners getting 50 _cash_,
the magistrate 100, and the Governor 100, a portion of which sum was
expended on the object for which it was levied. An edict abolishing
this attendance, and reducing the salaries of magistrates, had recently
been promulgated. At Tok Chhön, the ruin and decay of official
buildings, and the filth and squalor of the private dwellings, could go
no farther.


FOOTNOTES:

[38] My authority for this statement is Mr. W. K. Carles, formerly
H.B.M.’s Vice-Consul in Korea.




CHAPTER XXVIII

OVER THE AN-KIL YUNG PASS


Finding the Tai-döng totally impracticable, and being limited as to
time by the approach of the closing of the river below Phyöng-yang by
ice, I regretfully turned southwards, and journeyed Seoul-wards by
another route, of much interest, which touches here and there the right
bank of the Tai-döng.

As I sat amidst the dirt, squalor, rubbish, and odd and endism of
the inn yard before starting, surrounded by an apathetic, dirty,
vacant-looking, open-mouthed crowd steeped in poverty, I felt Korea to
be hopeless, helpless, pitiable, piteous, a mere shuttlecock of certain
great powers, and that there is no hope for her population of twelve
or fourteen millions, unless it is taken in hand by Russia, under
whose rule, giving security for the gains of industry as well as light
taxation, I had seen Koreans in hundreds transformed into energetic,
thriving, peasant farmers in Eastern Siberia.

The road, which was said, and truly, to be a very bad one, crosses
a small plain, and passing under a roofed gateway between two hills
which are scarred by remains of fortifications running east and west,
enters upon really fine scenery, which becomes magnificent in about 30
_li_, at first a fertile mountain-girdled basin, whose rim is spotted
with large villages, and then a narrowing valley with stony soil, and
a sparse population, walled in by savage mountains of emphatic forms,
swinging apart at times, and revealing loftier peaks and ranges then
glittering with new-fallen snow.

[Illustration: RUSSIAN OFFICERS, HUN-CHUN.]

In crossing the plain at a point where the road was good, I was
remarking to Mr. Yi what a pleasant and prosperous journey we had had,
and hoping our good fortune might continue, when there was a sudden
clash and flurry, I was nearly kicked off my pony, and in a moment we
were in the midst of disaster. One baggage pony was on his back on his
load, pawing the air in the middle of a ploughed field, his _mapu_
helpless for the time, lamed by a kick above the knee, sobbing, blood
and tears running down his face; the other baggage animal, having
divested himself of Im, was kicking off the rest of his load; and
Im, who had been thrown from the top of the pack, was sitting on the
roadside, evidently in intense pain--all the work of a moment. Mr. Yi
called to me that the soldier had broken his ankle, and it was a great
relief when he rose and walked towards me. Everything breakable was
broken except my photographic camera, which I did not look at for two
days for fear of what I might find!

Leaving the men to get the loads and ponies together, we walked on
to a hamlet so destitute as not to be able to provide either wood or
wadding for a splint! I picked up a thick faggot, however, which had
been dropped from a load, and it was thinned into being usable with
a hatchet, the only tool the village possessed, and after padding it
with a pair of stockings and making a six-yard bandage out of a cotton
garment, I put up Im’s right arm, which was broken just above the
wrist, in splints, and made a sling out of one of the two towels which
the rats had left to me. I should have been glad to know Korean enough
to rate the gossiping _mapu_, three men to two horses, who allowed the
accident to happen.

The animals always fight if they are left to themselves, and loads and
riders are nowhere. One day Mr. Yi had a bit of a finger taken off in a
fight, and if a strange brute had not kicked my stirrup iron (which was
bent by the blow) instead of myself, I should have had a broken ankle.
When we halted at midday the villagers tried hard to induce Im to have
his arm “needled” to “let out the bad blood,” a most risky surgical
proceeding, which often destroys the usefulness of a limb for life, and
he was anxious for it, but yielded to persuasion.

Being delayed by this accident, it was late when we started to cross
the pass of An-kil Yung, regarded as “the most dangerous in Korea,”
owing to its liability to sudden fogs and violent storms, 3,346 feet in
altitude, and said to be 30 _li_ long.

The infamous path traverses a wild rocky glen with an impetuous torrent
at its bottom, and only a few wretched hamlets, in which the hovels
are indistinguishable from the millet and brushwood stacks, along its
length of several miles. Poverty, limiting the people to the barest
necessaries of life, is the lot of the peasant in that region, but I
believe that his dirty and squalid habits give an impression of want
which does not actually exist. I doubt much whether any Koreans are
unable to provide themselves with two daily meals of millet, with
clothes sufficient for decency in summer and for warmth in winter,
and with fuel (grass, leaves, twigs, and weeds) enough to keep their
miserable rooms at a temperature of 70° and more by means of the hot
floor.

To the west the valley is absolutely closed in by a wall of peaks.
The bridle-path, a well-engineered road, when it ascends the very
steep ridge of the watershed in many zigzags, rests for 100 feet, and
descends the western side by seventy-five turns. Except in Tibet,
I never saw so apparently insurmountable an obstacle, but it does
not present any real difficulty. The ascent took seventy minutes.
Rain fell very heavily, but the superb view to the northeast was
scarcely obscured. At the top, which is only 100 feet wide, there is a
celebrated shrine to the dæmon of the past. To him all travellers put
up petitions for deliverance from the many malignant spirits who are
waiting to injure them, and for a safe descent. The shrine contains
many strips of paper inscribed with the names of those who have made
special payments for special prayers, and a few wreaths and posies of
faded paper flowers. The woman who lives in the one hovel on the pass
makes a good living by receiving money from travellers, who offer rice
cakes and desire prayers. The worship is nearly all done by proxy, and
the rice cakes do duty any number of times.

Besides the shrine and a one-roomed hovel, there are some open sheds
made of millet stalks to give shelter during storms. The An-kil Yung
pass is blocked by snow for three months of the year, but at other
times is much used in spite of its great height. Excellent potatoes are
grown on the mountain slopes at an altitude exceeding 3,000 feet, and
round Tok Chhön they are largely cultivated and enter into the diet of
the people, never having had the disease.

Darkness came on prematurely with the heavy rain, and we asked the
shrine-keeper to give us shelter for the night, but she said that to
take in six men and a foreign woman was impossible, as she had only
one room. But it was equally impossible for us to descend the pass in
the darkness with tired ponies, and after half an hour’s altercation
the matter was arranged, Im, who retained his wits, securing for me a
degree of privacy by hanging some heavy mats from a beam, giving me, I
am sure, the lion’s share of the apartment. Really the accommodation
was not much worse than usual, but though the mercury fell to the
freezing point, the hot floor kept the inside temperature up to 83°,
and the dread of tigers on the part of my hostess forbade my having
even a chink of the door open!

The rain cleared off in time for the last sunset gleam on the distant
mountains, which, when darkness fell on the pass, burned fiery red
against a strip of pale green sky, taking on afterwards one by one the
ashy look of death as the light died off from their snows. All about
An-kil Yung the mountains are wooded to their summits with deciduous
trees, the ubiquitous _Pinus sinensis_ being rare; but to the northward
in the direction of Paik-tu San the character of the scenery changes,
and peaks and precipices of naked rock, and lofty mountain monoliths,
with snow-crowned ranges beyond, form by far the grandest view that I
saw in this land of hill and valley.

Then Im had to be attended to, and though I was very anxious about him,
I could not be blind to the picturesqueness of the scene in the hovel,
Mr. Yi sitting in my chair holding the candle, the soldier, with his
face puckered with pain, squatting on the floor with his swollen arm
lying on a writing board on my lap, and no room to move. I failed there
as elsewhere to get a better piece of wood for the splint, which was
too short, and I could only get wadding for padding it by taking some
out of Im’s sleeve, and all the time and afterwards I was very anxious
for fear that I had put the bandage on too tightly or too loosely,
and that my want of experience would give the poor fellow a useless
right arm. He was in severe pain all that night, but he was very
plucky about it, made no fuss, and never allowed me to suffer in the
slightest degree from his accident. Indeed, he was even more attentive
than before. He said to Mr. Yi, “The foreign woman looked so sorry, and
touched my arm as if I had been one of her own people, I shall do my
best”--and so he did. I had indulged in a long perspective of pheasant
curries, and I must confess that when the prospect faded I felt a
little dismal. To a traveller who carries no “foreign food,” it makes a
great difference to get a nice, hot, stimulating dish (even though it
is served in the pot it is cooked in) after a ten hours’ cold ride. To
my surprise, I was never without curry for dinner, and though before
the accident I had only cold rice for tiffin, after it I was never
without something hot.

The descent of An-kil Yung is very grand. The road leads into a wide
valley with a fine stream, one side of which looks as if the mountains
had dumped down all their available stones upon it, while the other is
rich alluvial soil. Gold washing is carried on to a great extent along
this stream, which is a tributary of the Tai-döng, and some of the
workings show more care and method than usual, being pits neatly lined
with stone in their upper parts. Eighty cents per day is the average
earning of a gold-seeker there. This valley terminates in pretty,
broken country, with fine mountain views, and picturesque cliffs along
the river, on which the dark blue gloom of pines was lighted by the
fading scarlet of the maple, and crimson streaks of the _Ampelopsis
Veitchii_ brightened the russet into which the countless trailers which
draped the rocks had passed. The increased fertility of the soil was
denoted by the number of villages and hamlets on the road, and foot
passengers in twos and threes gave something of life and movement.
But it was remarkable that so soon after the harvest, and when the
roads were in their best condition, there were no goods in transit
except such local productions as paper and tobacco--no strings of
porters or ponies carrying goods into the interior from Phyöng-yang, no
evidence of trade but that given by the pedlars going the round of the
market-places.

Along that road and elsewhere near the villages there are tall poles
branching at the top into a V, which are erected in the belief that
they will guard the inhabitants from cholera and other pestilences.
On that day’s journey, at a crossroad, a small log with several holes
like those of a mouse-trap, one of them plugged doubly with bungs of
wood, was lying on the path, and the _mapu_ were careful to step over
it and lead their ponies over it, though it might easily have been
avoided. Into the bunged hole the _mu-tang_ or sorceress by her arts
had inveigled a dæmon which was causing sickness in a family, and had
corked him up! It is proper for passers-by to step over the log. At
nightfall it is buried. That afternoon’s ride was through extremely
attractive country--small valley basins of rich stoneless soil, with
brown hamlets nestling round them in calm, pine-sheltered folds of
hills, which though not high are shapely, and were etherealized into
purple beauty by the sinking sun, which turned the lake-like expanse of
the Tai-döng at Mon-chin Tai, the beautifully situated halting-place
for the night, into a sheet of gold.

With a splendid climate, an abundant, but not superabundant, rainfall,
a fertile soil, a measure of freedom from civil war and robber bands,
the Koreans ought to be a happy and fairly prosperous people. If
“squeezing,” _yamen_ runners and their exactions, and certain malign
practices of officials can be put down with a strong hand, and the
land tax is fairly levied and collected, and law becomes an agent for
protection rather than an instrument of injustice, I see no reason
why the Korean peasant should not be as happy and industrious as
the Japanese peasant. But these are great “ifs”! _Security for the
gains of industry_, from whatever quarter it comes, will, I believe,
transform the limp, apathetic native. Such ameliorations as have been
made are owed to Japan, but she had not a free hand, and she was too
inexperienced in the rôle which she undertook (and I believe honestly)
to play, to produce a harmonious working scheme of reform. Besides,
the men through whom any such scheme must be carried out are nearly
universally corrupt both by tradition and habit. Reform was jerky and
piecemeal, and Japan irritated the people by meddlesomeness in small
matters and suggested interferences with national habits, giving the
impression, which I found prevailing everywhere, that her object is to
denationalize the Koreans for purposes of her own.

Travellers are much impressed with the laziness of the Koreans, but
after seeing their energy and industry in Russian Manchuria, their
thrift, and the abundant and comfortable furnishings of their houses, I
greatly doubt whether it is to be regarded as a matter of temperament.
Every man in Korea knows that poverty is his best security, and that
anything he possesses beyond that which provides himself and his
family with food and clothing is certain to be taken from him by
voracious and corrupt officials. It is only when the exactions of
officials become absolutely intolerable and encroach upon his means of
providing the necessaries of life that he resorts to the only method of
redress in his power, which has a sort of counterpart in China. This
consists in driving out, and occasionally in killing, the obnoxious
and intolerable magistrate, or, as in a case which lately gained much
notoriety, roasting his favorite secretary on a wood pile. The popular
outburst, though under unusual provocation it may culminate in deeds of
regrettable violence, is usually founded on right, and is an effective
protest.

Among the modes of squeezing are forced labor, doubling or trebling the
amount of a legitimate tax, exacting bribes in cases of litigation,
forced loans, etc. If a man is reported to have saved a little money,
an official asks for the loan of it. If it is granted, the lender
frequently never sees principal or interest; if it is refused, he
is arrested, thrown into prison on some charge invented for his
destruction, and beaten until either he or his relations for him
produce the sum demanded. To such an extent are these demands carried,
that in Northern Korea, Where the winters are fairly severe, the
peasants, when the harvest has left them with a few thousand _cash_,
put them in a hole in the ground, and pour water into it, the frozen
mass which results then being earthed over, when it is fairly safe both
from officials and thieves.




CHAPTER XXIX

SOCIAL POSITION OF WOMEN


Mou-chin Tai is a beautifully situated village, and has something
of a look of comfort. Up to that point small boats can come up at
all seasons, but there is almost no trade. The Tai-döng expands into
a broad sheet of water, on which the hills descend abruptly. There
is a ferry, and we drove our ponies into the ferryboat and yelled
for the ferryman. After a time he appeared on the top of the bank,
but absolutely declined to take us over “for any money.” He would
have “nothing so do with a foreigner,” he said, and he would not be
“implicated with a Japanese”! So we put ourselves across, and the
_mapu_ were so angry that they threw his poles into the river.

Passing through very pretty country, and twice crossing the Tai-döng,
we halted at the town of Sun-chhön, a magistracy with a deplorably
ruinous _yamen_. All these official buildings have seen better days.
Their courts are spacious, and the double-roofed gateways, with their
drum towers, as well as the central hall of the _yamen_, still retain
a certain look of stateliness, though paint, lacquer, and gilding have
long ago disappeared from the elaborately arranged beams and carved
wood of the roofs, and the fretwork screening the interiors is always
shabby and broken.

About the Sun-chhön _yamen_, and all others, there are crowds of
“runners,” writers, soldiers in coarse ragged uniforms, young men of
the _yang-ban_ class in spotless white garments, lounging, or walking
with the swinging gait befitting their position, while the decayed
and forlorn rooms in the courtyard are filled with petty officials,
smoking long pipes and playing cards. To judge from the crowds of
attendants, the walking hither and thither, the hurrying in various
directions with manuscripts, and the din of drums and fifes when the
great gate is opened and closed, one would think that nothing less than
the business of an empire was transacted within the ruinous portals.

Soldiers, writers, _yamen_ runners, and men of the _yang-ban_ and
literary classes combined with the loafers of the town to compose a
crowd which by its buzzing and shouting, and tearing off the paper from
my latticed door, gave me a fatiguing and hideous two hours, a Korean
crowd being only _un_bearable when it is led by men of the literary
class, who, as in China, indulge in every sort of vulgar impertinence.
Eventually I was smuggled into the women’s apartments, where I was
victimized in other ways by insatiable curiosity.

The women of the lower classes in Korea are ill-bred and unmannerly,
far removed from the gracefulness of the same class in Japan or the
reticence and kindliness of the Chinese peasant women. Their clothing
is extremely dirty, as if the men had a monopoly of their ceaseless
laundry work, which everywhere goes on far into the night. Every
brookside has its laundresses squatting on flat stones, dipping the
soiled clothes in the water, laying them on flat stones in tightly
rolled bundles and beating them with flat paddles, a previous process
consisting of steeping them in a ley made of wood ashes. Bleached
under the brilliant sun and very slightly glazed with rice starch,
after being beaten for a length of time with short quick taps on a
wooden roller with club-shaped “laundry sticks,” common white cotton
looks like dull white satin, and has a dazzling whiteness which
always reminds me of St. Mark’s words concerning the raiment at the
Transfiguration, “so as no fuller on earth can white them.” This
wearing of white clothes, and especially of white wadded clothes in
winter, entails very severe and incessant labor on the women. The coats
have to be unpicked and put together again each time that they are
washed, and though some of the long seams are often joined with paste,
there is still much sewing to be done.

Besides this the Korean peasant woman makes all the clothing of the
household, does all the cooking, husks and cleans rice with a heavy
pestle and mortar, carries heavy loads to market on her head, draws
water, in remote districts works in the fields, rises early and takes
rest late, spins and weaves, and as a rule has many children, who are
not weaned till the age of three.

The peasant woman may be said to have no pleasures. She is nothing
but a drudge, till she can transfer some of the drudgery to her
daughter-in-law. At thirty she looks fifty, and at forty is frequently
toothless. Even the love of personal adornment fades out of her life
at a very early age. Beyond the daily routine of life it is probable
that her thoughts never stray except to the dæmons, who are supposed to
people earth and air, and whom it is her special duty to propitiate.

It is really difficult to form a general estimate of the position of
women in Korea. Absolute seclusion is the inflexible rule among the
upper classes. The ladies have their own courtyards and apartments,
towards which no windows from the men’s apartments must look. No
allusion must be made by a visitor to the females of the household.
Inquiries after their health would be a gross breach of etiquette, and
politeness requires that they should not be supposed to exist. Women do
not receive any intellectual training, and in every class are regarded
as beings of a very inferior order. Nature having in the estimation
of the Korean man, who holds a sort of dual philosophy, marked woman
as his inferior, the _Youth’s Primer_, _Historical Summaries_, and
the _Little Learning_ impress this view upon him in the schools, and
as he begins to mix with men this estimate of women receives daily
corroboration.

The seclusion of women was introduced five centuries ago by the present
dynasty, in a time of great social corruption, for the protection of
the family, and has probably been continued, not, as a Korean frankly
told Mr. Heber Jones, because men distrust their wives, but because
they distrust each other, and with good reason, for the immorality of
the cities and of the upper classes almost exceeds belief. Thus all
young women, and all older women except those of the lowest class, are
secluded within the inner courts of the houses by a custom which has
more than the force of law. To go out suitably concealed at night, or
on occasions when it is necessary to travel or to make a visit, in a
rigidly closed chair, are the only “outings” of a Korean woman of the
middle and upper classes, and the low-class woman only goes out for
purposes of work.

The murdered Queen told me, in allusion to my own Korean journeys, that
she knew nothing of Korea, or even of the capital, except on the route
of the _Kur-dong_.

Daughters have been put to death by their fathers, wives by their
husbands, and women have even committed suicide, according to Dallet,
when strange men, whether by accident or design, have even touched
their hands, and quite lately a serving-woman gave as her reason for
remissness in attempting to save her mistress, who perished in a fire,
that in the confusion a man had touched the lady, making her not worth
saving!

The law may not enter the women’s apartments. A noble hiding himself
in his wife’s rooms cannot be seized for any crime except that of
rebellion. A man wishing to repair his roof must notify his neighbors,
lest by any chance he should see any of their women. After the age of
seven, boys and girls part company, and the girls are rigidly secluded,
seeing none of the male sex except their fathers and brothers until the
date of marriage, after which they can only see their own and their
husband’s near male relations. Girl children, even among the very poor,
are so successfully hidden away, that in somewhat extensive Korean
journeys I never saw one girl who looked above the age of six, except
hanging listlessly about in the women’s rooms, and the brightness
which girl life contributes to social existence is unknown in the
country.

But I am far from saying that the women fret and groan under this
system, or crave for the freedom which European women enjoy. Seclusion
is the custom of centuries. Their idea of liberty is peril, and I quite
believe that they think that they are closely guarded because they are
valuable chattels. One intelligent woman, when I pressed her hard to
say what they thought of our customs in the matter, replied, “We think
that your husbands don’t care for you very much”!

Concubinage is a recognized institution, but not a respected one.
The wife or mother of a man not infrequently selects the concubine,
who in many cases is looked upon by the wife as a proper appendage
of her husband’s means or position, much as a carriage or a butler
might be with us. The offspring in these cases are under a serious
social stigma, and until lately have been excluded from some desirable
positions. Legally the Korean is a strict monogamist, and even when a
widower marries again, and there are children by the second marriage,
those of the first wife retain special rights.

There are no native schools for girls, and though women of the upper
classes learn to read the native script, the number of Korean women
who can read is estimated at two in a thousand. It appears that a
philosophy largely imported from China, superstitions regarding
dæmons, the education of men, illiteracy, a minimum of legal rights,
and inexorable custom have combined to give woman as low a status in
civilized Korea as in any of the barbarous countries in the world.
Yet there is no doubt that the Korean woman, in addition to being a
born _intrigante_, exercises a certain direct influence, especially as
mother and mother-in-law, and in the arrangement of marriages.

Her rights are few, and depend on custom rather than law. She now
possesses the right of remarriage, and that of remaining unmarried
till she is sixteen, and she can refuse permission to her husband for
his concubines to occupy the same house with herself. She is powerless
to divorce her husband, conjugal fidelity, typified by the goose,
the symbolic figure at a wedding, being a feminine virtue solely.
Her husband may cast her off for seven reasons--incurable disease,
theft, childlessness, infidelity, jealousy, incompatibility with her
parents-in-law, and a quarrelsome disposition. She may be sent back
to her father’s house for any one of these causes. It is believed,
however, that desertion is far more frequent than divorce. By custom
rather than law she has certain recognized rights, as to the control of
children, redress in case of damage, etc. Domestic happiness is a thing
she does not look for. The Korean has a house, but no home. The husband
has his life apart; common ties of friendship and external interest are
not known. His pleasure is taken in company with male acquaintances and
_gesang_; and the marriage relationship is briefly summarized in the
remark of a Korean gentleman in conversation with me on the subject,
“We marry our wives, but we love our concubines.”




CHAPTER XXX

EXORCISTS AND DANCING WOMEN


At Cha-san, a magistracy, we rejoined the road from which we had
diverged on the northward journey. It is a quiet, decayed place, though
in a good agricultural country. As I had been there before, the edge
of curiosity was blunted, and there was no mobbing. The people gave
a distressing account of their sufferings from the Chinese soldiers,
who robbed them unscrupulously, took what they wanted without paying,
and maltreated the women. The Koreans deserted, through fright, the
adjacent ferry village of Ou-Chin-gang, where we previously crossed the
Tai-döng, and it was held by 53 Chinese, being an important post. Two
Japanese scouts appeared on the other side of the river, fired, and the
Chinese detachment broke and fled! At Cha-san, as elsewhere, the people
expressed intense hatred of the Japanese, going so far as to say that
they would not leave one of them alive; but, as in all other places,
they bore unwilling testimony to the good conduct of the soldiers, and
the regularity with which the commissariat paid for supplies.

The Japanese detachments were being withdrawn from the posts along that
road, and we passed several well-equipped detachments, always preceded
by bulls loaded with red blankets. The men were dressed in heavy gray
ulsters with deep fur-lined collars, and had very thick felt gloves.
They marched as if on parade, and their officers were remarkable for
their smartness. When they halted for dinner, they found everything
ready, and had nothing to do but stack their arms and eat! The peasant
women went on with their avocations as usual. In that district and in
the region about Tok Chhön, the women seclude themselves in monstrous
hats like our wicker garden sentry-boxes, but without bottoms. These
extraordinary coverings are 7 feet long, 5 broad, and 3 deep, and
shroud the figure from head to foot. Heavy rain fell during the
night, and though the following day was beautiful, the road was a
deep quagmire, so infamously bad that when only two and a half hours
from Phyöng-yang we had to stop at the wayside inn of An-chin-Miriok,
where I slept in a granary only screened from the stable by a bamboo
mat, and had the benefit of the squealing and vindictive sounds which
accompanied numerous abortive fights. If possible, the next day
exceeded its predecessors in beauty, and though the drawbacks of Korean
travelling are many, this journey had been so bright and so singularly
prosperous, except for Im’s accident, which, however, brought out
some of the best points of Korean character, that I was even sorry to
leave the miserable little hostelry and conclude the expedition, and
part with the _mapu_, who throughout had behaved extremely well. The
next morning, crossing the battlefield once more and passing through
the desolations which war had wrought, I reached my old, cold, but
comparatively comfortable quarters at Phyöng-yang, where I remained for
six days.

While the river remained open, a small Korean steamer of uncertain
habits, the _Hariong_, plied nominally between Phyöng-yang and
Chemulpo, but actually ran from Po-san, a point about 60 _li_ lower
down the Tai-döng, which above it is too shallow and full of sandbanks
for vessels of any draught, necessitating the transhipment of all
goods not brought up by junks of small tonnage. There was, however, no
telegraph between Po-san and Phyöng-yang, no one knew when the steamer
arrived except by cargo coming up the river, and she only remained a
few hours; so that my visit to Phyöng-yang was agitated by the fear
of losing her, and having to make a long land journey when time was
precious. There was no Korean post, and the Japanese military post and
telegraph office absolutely refused to carry messages or letters for
civilians. Wild rumors, of which there were a goodly crop every hour,
were the substitute for news.

A subject of special interest and inquiry at Phyöng-yang was mission
work as carried on by American missionaries. At Seoul it is far more
difficult to get into touch with it, as, being older, it has naturally
more of religious conventionality. But I will take this opportunity of
saying that longer and more intimate acquaintance only confirmed the
high opinion I early formed of the large body of missionaries in Seoul,
of their earnestness and devotion to their work, of the energetic,
hopeful, and patient spirit in which it is carried on, of the harmony
prevailing among the different denominations, and the cordial and
sympathetic feeling towards the Koreans. The interest of many of the
missionaries in Korean history, folklore, and customs, as evidenced
by the pages of the valuable monthly, the _Korean Repository_, is
also very admirable, and a traveller in Korea must apply to them for
information vainly sought elsewhere.

Christian missions were unsuccessful in Phyöng-yang. It was a very
rich and very immoral city. More than once it turned out some of
the missionaries, and rejected Christianity with much hostility.
Strong antagonism prevailed, the city was thronged with _gesang_,
courtesans, and sorcerers, and was notorious for its wealth and infamy.
The Methodist Mission was broken up for a time, and in six years
the Presbyterians only numbered 28 converts. Then came the war, the
destruction of Phyöng-yang, its desertion by its inhabitants, the ruin
of its trade, the reduction of its population from 60,000 or 70,000 to
15,000, and the flight of the few Christians.

Since the war there had been a very great change. There had been 28
baptisms, and some of the most notorious evil livers among the middle
classes, men shunned by other men for their exceeding wickedness,
were leading pure and righteous lives. There were 140 catechumens
under instruction, and subject to a long period of probation before
receiving baptism, and the temporary church, though enlarged during
my absence, was so overcrowded that many of the worshippers were
compelled to remain outside. The offertories were liberal.[39] In the
dilapidated extra-mural premises occupied by the missionaries, thirty
men were living for twenty-one days, two from each of fifteen villages,
all convinced of the truth of Christianity, and earnestly receiving
instruction in Christian fact and doctrine. They were studying for
six hours daily with teachers, and for a far longer time amongst
themselves, and had meetings for prayer, singing, and informal talk
each evening. I attended three of these, and as Mr. Moffett interpreted
for me, I was placed in touch with much of what was unusual and
interesting, and learned more of missions in their earlier stage than
anywhere else.

Besides the thirty men from the villages, the Christians and
catechumens from the city crowded the room and doorways. Two
missionaries sat on the floor at one end of the room with a kerosene
lamp mounted securely on two wooden pillows in front of them--then
there were a few candles on the floor, centres of closely-packed
groups. Hymns were howled in many keys to familiar tunes, several
Koreans prayed, bowing their foreheads to the earth in reverence, after
which some gave accounts of how the Gospel reached their villages,
chiefly through visits from the few Phyöng-yang Christians, who were
“scattered abroad,” and then two men, who seemed very eloquent as well
as fluent, and riveted the attention of all, gave narratives of two
other men who they believed were possessed with devils, and said the
devils had been driven out a few months previously by united prayer,
and that the “foul spirits” were adjured in the name of Jesus to come
out, and that the men trembled and turned cold as the devils left them,
never to return, and that both became Christians, along with many who
saw them.

A good many men came from distant villages one afternoon to ask for
Christian teaching, and in the evening one after another got up and
told how a refugee from Phyöng-yang had come to his village and had
told them that they were both wicked and foolish to worship dæmons,
and that they were wrongdoers, and that there is a Lord of Heaven who
judges wrongdoing, but that He is as loving as any father, and that
they did not know what to think, but that in some places twenty and
more were meeting daily to worship “the Highest,” and that many of the
women had buried the dæmon fetishes, and that they wanted some one to
go and teach them how to worship the true God.

A young man told how his father, nearly eighty years old, had met Mr.
Moffett by the roadside, and hearing from him “some good things,” had
gone home saying he had heard “good news,” “great news,” and had got
“the Books,” and that he had become a Christian, and lived a good life,
and had called his neighbors together to hear “the news,” and would not
rest till his son had come to be taught in the “good news,” and take
back a teacher. An elderly man, who had made a good living by sorcery,
came and gave Mr. Moffett the instruments of his trade, saying he “had
served devils all his life, but now he knew that they were wicked
spirits, and he was serving the true God.”

On the same afternoon four requests for Christian teaching came to
the missionaries, each signed by from fifteen to forty men. At all
these evening meetings the room was crammed within and without by
men, reverent and earnest in manner, some of whom had been shunned for
their wickedness even in a city “the smoke of which” in her palmy days
was said “to go up like the smoke of Sodom,” but who, transformed by a
power outside themselves, were then leading exemplary lives. There were
groups in the dark, groups round the candles on the floor, groups in
the doorways, and every face was aglow except that of poor, bewildered
Im. One old man, with his forehead in the dust, prayed like a child
that, as the letter bearing to New York an earnest request for more
teachers was on its way, “the wind and sea might waft it favorably,”
and that when it was read the eyes of the foreigners[40] might be
opened “to see the sore need of people in a land where no one knows
anything, and where all believe in devils, and are dying in the dark.”

As I looked upon those lighted faces, wearing an expression strongly
contrasting with the dull, dazed look of apathy which is characteristic
of the Korean, it was impossible not to recognize that it was the
teaching of the Apostolic doctrines of sin, judgment to come, and
divine love which had brought about such results, all the more
remarkable because, according to the missionaries, a large majority of
those who had renounced dæmon worship, and were living in the fear of
the true God, had been attracted to Christianity in the first instance
by the hope of gain! This, and almost unvarying testimony to the same
effect, confirm me in the opinion that when people talk of “nations
craving for the Gospel,” “stretching out pleading hands for it,” or
“athirst for God,” or “longing for the living waters,” they are using
words which in that connection have no meaning. That there are “seekers
after righteousness” here and there I do not doubt, but I believe that
the one “craving” of the far East is for money--that “unrest” is only
in the east a synonym for poverty, and that the spiritual instincts
have yet to be created.

On the Sunday I went with Dr. Scranton of Seoul to the first regular
service ever held for women in Phyöng-yang. There were a number
present, all dæmon-worshippers, some of them attracted by the sight
of a “foreign woman.” It was impossible to have a formal service with
people who had not the most elementary ideas of God, of prayer, of
moral evil, and of good. It was not possible to secure their attention.
They were destitute of religious ideas. An elderly matron, who acted as
a sort of spokeswoman said, “They thought perhaps God is a big dæmon,
and He might help them to get back their lost goods.” That service was
“mission work” in its earliest stage.

On returning from a service in the afternoon where there were crowds of
bright intelligent-looking worshippers, we came upon one of the most
important ceremonies connected with the popular belief in dæmons--the
exorcism of an evil spirit which was supposed to be the cause of a
severe illness. Never by night or day on my two visits to Phyöng-yang
had I been out of hearing of the roll of the sorcerer’s drum, with the
loud vibratory clash of cymbals as an intermittent accompaniment. Such
sounds attracted us to the place of exorcism.

In a hovel with an open door a man lay very ill. The space in front was
matted and enclosed by low screens, within which were Korean tables
loaded with rice cakes, boiled rice, stewed chicken, sprouted beans
and other delicacies. In this open space squatted three old women, two
of whom beat large drums, shaped like hour-glasses, while the third
clashed large cymbals. Facing them was the _mu-tang_ or sorceress,
dressed in rose-pink silk, with a buff gauze robe, with its sleeves
trailing much on the ground, over it. Pieces of paper resembling the
Shinto _gohei_ decorated her hair, and a curious cap of buff gauze with
red patches upon it, completed the not inelegant costume. She carried
a fan, but it was only used occasionally in one of the dances. She
carried over her left shoulder a stick, painted with bands of bright
colors, from which hung a gong which she beat with a similar stick,
executing at the same time a slow rhythmic movement accompanied by a
chant. From time to time one of the ancient drummers gathered on one
plate pieces from all the others and scattered them to the four winds
for the spirits to eat, invoking them, saying, “Do not trouble this
house any more, and we will again appease you by offerings.”

The _mu-tang_ is, of course, according to the belief of those who
seek her services, possessed by a powerful dæmon, and by means of
her incantations might induce this dæmon to evict the one which was
causing the sickness by aiding her exorcisms, but where the latter is
particularly obstinate, she may require larger fees and more offerings
in order that she may use incantations for bringing to her aid a yet
more powerful dæmon than her own. The exorcism lasted fourteen hours,
until four the next morning, when the patient began to recover. A
crowd, chiefly composed of women and children, stood round the fence,
the children imbibing devilry from their infancy.

I was not at a regular inn in Phyöng-yang but at a broker’s house,
with a yard to myself nominally, but which was by no means private.
Im generally, and not roughly, requested the people to “move on,” but
he made two exceptions, one being in favor of a madwoman of superior
appearance and apparel who haunted me on my second visit, hanging about
the open front of my room, and following me to the mission-house and
elsewhere. She said that I was her grandmother and that she must go
with me everywhere, and, like many mad people, she had an important
and mysterious communication to make which for obvious reasons never
reached me. She was the concubine of a late governor of the city, and
not having escaped before its capture, went mad from horror at seeing
the Chinese spitted on the bayonets of the Japanese. She carried a
long bodkin, and went through distressing pantomimes of running people
through with it!

The other exception was in favor of _gesang_, upon whose presence Im
looked quite approvingly, and evidently thought I did.

Phyöng-yang has always been famous for the beauty and accomplishments
of its _gesang_, singing and dancing girls, resembling in many respects
the _geishas_ of Japan, but correctly speaking they mostly belong to
the Government, and are supported by the Korean Treasury. At the time
of my two first sojourns in Seoul, about seventy of them were attached
to the Royal Palace. They were under the control of the same Government
department as that with which the official musicians are connected.

As a poor man gifted with many sons, for whom he cannot provide,
sometimes presents one to the government as a eunuch, so he may give
a girl to be a _gesang_. The _gesang_ are trained from a very early
age in such accomplishments as other Korean women lack, and which
will ensure their attractiveness, such as playing on various musical
instruments, singing, dancing, reading, reciting, writing, and fancy
work. As their destiny is to make time pass agreeably for men of the
upper classes, this amount of education is essential, though a Korean
does not care how blank and undeveloped the mind of his wife is. The
_gesang_ are always elegantly dressed, as they were when they came to
see me, even through the mud of the Phyöng-yang streets, and as they
have not known seclusion, their manners with both sexes have a graceful
ease. Their dancing, like that of most Oriental countries, consists
chiefly of posturing, and is said by those foreigners who have seen it,
to be perfectly free from impropriety.

Dr. Allen, Secretary to the U.S. Legation at Seoul, in a paper in
the _Korean Repository_ for 1886, describes among the dances which
specially interest foreigners at the entertainments at the Royal
Palace one known as the “Lotus Dance.” In this, he writes, “A tub is
brought in containing a large lotus flower just ready to burst open.
Two imitation storks then come in, each one being a man very cleverly
disguised. These birds flap their wings, snap their beaks, and dance
round in admiration of the beautiful bud which they evidently intend
to pluck as soon as they have enjoyed it sufficiently in anticipation.
Their movements all this time are very graceful, and they come closer
and closer to the flower keeping time to the soft music. At last the
proper time arrives, the flower is plucked, when, as the pink petals
fall back, out steps a little _gesang_ to the evident amazement of the
birds, and to the intense delight of the younger spectators.”

The Sword and Dragon dances are also extremely popular, and on great
occasions the performance is never complete without “Throwing the
Ball,” which consists in a series of graceful arm movements before a
painted arch, after which the _gesang_ march in procession before the
King, and the successful dancers receive presents.

Though the most beautiful and attractive _gesang_ come from
Phyöng-yang, they are found throughout the country. From the King
down to the lowest official who can afford the luxury, the presence
of _gesang_ is regarded at every entertainment as indispensable to
the enjoyment of the guests. They appear at official dinners at the
Foreign Office, and at the palace are the chief entertainers, and sing
and dance at the many parties which are given by Koreans at the picnic
resorts near Seoul, and though attached to the prefectures, and various
other departments, may be hired by gentlemen to give fascination to
their feasts.

Their training and non-secluded position place them, however, outside
of the reputable classes, and though in Japan _geishas_ often become
the wives of nobles and even of statesmen, no Korean man would dream of
raising a _gesang_ to such a position.

Dr. Allen, who has had special opportunities of becoming acquainted
with the inner social life of Korea, says that they are the source of
much heartburning to the legal but neglected wife, who in no case is
the wife of her husband’s choice, and that Korean folklore abounds
with stories of discord arising in families from attachments to
_gesang_, and of ardent and prolonged devotion on the part of young
noblemen to these girls, who they are prevented from marrying by rigid
custom. There is a Korean tale called _The Swallow King’s Rewards_ in
which a man is visited with the “ten plagues of Korea,” for maltreating
a wounded swallow, and in it _gesang_ are represented along with
_mu-tang_ as “among the ten curses of the land.”

Dr. Allen, to whom I owe this fact writes, “Doubtless they are so
considered by many a lonely wife, as well as by the fathers who mourn
to see their sons wasting their substance in riotous living, as they
doubtless did themselves when they were young.”

The house in which I had quarters was much resorted to by merchants for
whom my host transacted brokerage business, and entertainments were
the order of the day. Mr. Yi was invited to dinner daily, and on the
last evening entertained all who had invited him. Such meals cost per
head as much as a dinner at the St. James’s restaurant! Noise seems
essential to these gatherings. The men shout at the top of their voices.

There is an enormous amount of visiting and entertaining among men in
the cities. Some public men keep open house, giving their servants as
much as $60 a day for the entertainment of guests. Men who are in easy
circumstances go continually from one house to another to kill time.
They never talk politics, it is too dangerous, but retail the latest
gossip of the court or city and the witticisms attributed to great men,
and tell, hear, and invent news. The front rooms of houses in which
the men live are open freely to all comers. In some circles, though
it is said to a far less extent than formerly, men meet and talk over
what we should call “questions of literary criticism,” compare poetic
compositions, the ability to compose a page of poetry being the grand
result of Korean education, and discuss the meaning of celebrated
works--all literature being in Chinese.

The common people meet in the streets, the house fronts, and the inns.
They ask each other endless questions, of a nature that we should think
most impertinent, regarding each other’s business, work, and money
transactions, and for the latest news. It is every man’s business to
hear or create all the news he can. What he hears he embellishes by
lies and exaggerations. Korea is the country of wild rumors. What a
Korean knows, or rather hears, he tells. According to Père Dallet, he
does not know the meaning of reserve, though he is utterly devoid of
frankness. Men live in company in each others’ houses. Domestic life is
unknown. The women in the inner rooms receive female visitors, and the
girl children are present. The boys at a very early age are removed to
the men’s apartments, where they learn from the conversation they hear
that every man who respects himself must regard women with contempt.

We left Phyöng-yang for Po-san in a very small boat in which six people
and their luggage were uncomfortably packed and cramped. One of the two
boatmen was literally “down with fever,” but with one and the strong
ebb-tide we accomplished 20 miles in six hours, and were well pleased
to find the _Hariong_ lying at anchor, as we had not been able to get
any definite information concerning her, and I never believed in her
till I saw her. The Tai-döng has some historic interest, for up its
broad waters sailed Ki-ja or Kit-ze with his army of 5,000 men on the
way to found Phyöng-yang and Korean civilization, and down it fled
Ki-jun, the last king of the first dynasty from the forces of Wei-man
descending from the north. Phyöng-yang impressed me as it did Consul
Carles with its natural suitability for commerce, and this Tai-döng,
navigable up to the city for small junks, is the natural outlet for
beans and cotton, some of which find their way to Newchwang for
shipment, for the rich iron ore which lies close to the river banks
at Kai Chhön, for the gold of Keum-san only 20 miles off, for the
abounding coal of the immediate neighborhood; for the hides, which are
now carried on men’s backs to Chemulpo, and for the products of what is
said to be a considerable silk industry.

In going down the river something is seen of the original size of
Phyöng-yang, for the “earth wall” on solid masonry, built, it is said,
by Kit-ze 3,000 years ago, follows the right bank of the Tai-döng for
about four miles before it turns away to the north, to terminate at the
foot of the hill on which is the reputed grave of its builder. This
extends in that direction possibly three miles beyond the present wall.

The plain through which the river runs is fertile and well
cultivated, though the shining mud flats at low tide are anything but
prepossessing. Various rivers, enabling boats of light draught to
penetrate the country, most of them rising in the picturesque mountain
ranges which descend on the plain, specially on its western side, join
the Tai-döng.

Much had been said of the _Hariong_. I was told I “should be all right
if I could get the _Hariong_,” that “the _Hariong’s_ a most comfortable
little boat--she has ten staterooms,” and as we approached her in the
mist, very wet, and stiff from the length of time spent in a cramped
position, I conjured up visions of comfort and even luxury which were
not to be realized.

She was surrounded by Japanese junks, Japanese soldiers crowded her
gangways, and Japanese officers were directing the loading. We hooked
on to the junks and lay in the rain for an hour, nobody taking the
slightest notice of us. Mr. Yi then scrambled on board and there was
another half-hour’s delay, which took us into the early darkness. He
reappeared, saying there was no cabin and we must go on shore. But
there was no place to sleep on shore and it was the last steamer,
so I climbed on board and Im hurried in the baggage. It was raining
and blowing, and we were huddled on the wet deck like steerage
passengers, Japanese soldiers and commissariat officers there as
elsewhere in Korea, masters of the situation. Mr. Yi was frantic that
he, a Government official, and one from whom “the Japanese had to
ask a hundred favors a month” should be treated with such indignity!
The vessel was hired by the Japanese commissariat department to
go to Nagasaki, calling at Chemulpo, and we were really, though
unintentionally, interlopers!

There was truly no room for me, and the arrangement whereby I received
shelter was essentially Japanese. I lived in a minute saloon with the
commissariat officers, and fed precariously, Im dealing out to me, at
long intervals, the remains of a curry which he had had the forethought
to bring. There was a Korean purser, but the poor dazed fellow was
“nowhere,” being totally superseded by a brisk young manikin who, in
the intervals of business, came to me, notebook in hand, that I might
help him to enlarge his English vocabulary. The only sign of vitality
that the limp, displaced purser showed was to exclaim with energy more
than once, “I hate these Japanese, they’ve taken our own ships.”

Fortunately the sea was quite still, and the weather was dry and fine;
even Yön-yung Pa-da, a disagreeable stretch of ocean off the Whang Hai
coast, was quiet, the halt of nearly a day off the new treaty port of
Chin-nam-po where the mud flats extend far out from the shore, was
not disagreeable, and we reached the familiar harbor of Chemulpo by a
glorious sunset on the frosty evening of the third day from Po-san, the
voyage in a small Asiatic transport having turned out better than could
have been expected.

ITINERARY

  Seoul to--
                         _Li._
  Ko-yang                 40
  Pa Ju                   40
  O-mok                   40
  Ohur-chuk Kio           30
  Song-do                 10
  O-hung-suk Ju           30
  Kun-ko Kai              30
  Tol Maru                35
  An-shung-pa Pal         25
  Shur-hung               30
  Hung-shou Wan           30
  Pong-san                40
  Whang Ju                40
  Kur-moun Tari           30
  Chi-dol-pa Pal          40
  Phyöng-yang             30
  Mori-ko Kai             30
  Liang-yang Chang        30
  Cha-san                 30
  Shou-yang Yi            40
  Ha-kai Oil              35
  Ka Chang                35
  Huok Kuri               40
  Tok Chhön               30
  Shur-chong              30
  An-kil Yung             20
  Shil-yi                 40
  Mou-chin Tai            25
  Sun Chhön               35
  Cha-san                 30
  Siang-yang Chhön        40
  An-chin Miriok          30
  Phyöng-yang             20
                        ----
  Total land journey    1060


FOOTNOTES:

[39] The Seoul _Christian News_, a paper recently started, gave its
readers an account of the Indian famine, with the result that the
Christians in the magistracy of Chang-yang raised among themselves $84
for the sufferers in a land they had hardly heard of, some of the women
sending their solid silver rings to be turned into _cash_. In Seoul the
native Presbyterian churches gave $60 to the same fund, of which $20
were collected by a new congregation organized entirely by Koreans. I
am under the impression that the liberality of the Korean Christians in
proportion to their means far exceeds our own.

[40] The American Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions.




CHAPTER XXXI

THE HAIR-CROPPING EDICT


The year 1896 opened for Korea in a gloom as profound as that in
which the previous year had closed. There were small insurrections in
all quarters, various officials were killed, and some of the rebels
threatened to march on the capital. Japanese influence declined,
Japanese troops were gradually withdrawn from the posts they had
occupied, the engagements of many of the Japanese advisers and
controllers in departments expired and were not renewed, some of the
reforms instituted by Japan during the period of her ascendency died
a natural death, there was a distinctly retrograde movement, and
government was disintegrating all over the land.

The general agitation in the country and several of the more serious
of the outbreaks had a cause which, while to our thinking it is
ludicrous, shows as much as anything else the intense conservatism of
_pung-kok_ or custom which prevails among the Koreans. The cause was
an attack on the “Top Knot” by a Royal Edict on 30th December, 1895!
This set the country aflame! The Koreans, who had borne on the whole
quietly the ascendency of a hated power, the murder of their Queen, and
the practical imprisonment of their King, found the attack on their
hair more than they could stand. The topknot is more to a Korean than
the queue is to a Chinese. The queue to the latter may be a sign of
subjugation or of loyalty to the Government and that is all, and the
small Chinese boy wears it as soon as his hair is long enough to plait.

To the Korean the Top Knot means nationality, antiquity (some say
of five centuries, others of 2,000 years), sanctity derived from
antiquity, entrance on manhood socially and legally, even though he
may be a child in years, the assumption of two names by which in
addition to his family name he is afterwards known, and by which he
is designated on the ancestral tablets, marriage is intimately bound
up with it, as is ancestral worship, and as has been mentioned in the
chapter on marriage, a Korean without a Top Knot, even if in middle
life, can only be treated as a nameless and irresponsible boy. In a
few cases a Korean, to escape from this stage of disrespect, scrapes
together enough to pay for the Top Knot ceremonies and the _mang-kun_,
hat, and long coat, which are their sequence, though he is too poor
to support a family, but the Top Knot in ninety-nine cases out of a
hundred is only assumed on marriage, without which the wearer has the
title of “a half man” bestowed on him!

The ceremonies at the “Investiture of the Top Knot” deserve a brief
notice as among the most important of the singularities of the
nation. When the father and family have decided that a boy shall be
“invested,” which in nearly all cases is on the verge of his marriage,
men’s clothes, the hat, _mang-kun_, etc., are provided to the limits
of the family purse, and the astrologers are consulted, who choose a
propitious day and hour for the ceremony, as well as the point of the
compass which the chief actor is to face during its progress. The fees
of the regular astrologer are very high, and in the case of the poor,
the blind sorcerer is usually called in to decide on these important
points.

When the auspicious day and hour arrive the family assembles, but as it
is a family matter only, friends are not invited. Luck and prosperity
and a number of sons are essential for the Master of the Ceremonies. If
the father has been so blessed he acts as such, if not, an old friend
who has been more lucky acts for him. The candidate for the distinction
and privileges of manhood is placed in the middle of the room, seated
on the floor, great care being taken that he faces the point of the
compass which has been designated, otherwise he would have bad luck
from that day forward. With much ceremony and due deliberation the
Master of the Ceremonies proceeds to unwind the boy’s massive plait,
shaves a circular spot three inches in diameter on the crown of his
head, brings the whole hair up to this point, and arranges it with
strings into a firm twist from two and a half to four inches in length,
which stands up from the head slightly forwards like a horn. The
_mang-kun_, fillet, or crownless skullcap of horsehair gauze, coming
well down over the brow, is then tied on, and so tightly as to produce
a permanent groove in the skin, and headaches for some time. The hat,
secured by its strings, is then put on, and the long wide coat, and
the boy rises up a man.[41] The new man bows to each of his relations
in regular order, beginning with his grandfather, kneeling and placing
his hands, palms downward, on the floor, and resting his forehead for a
moment upon them.

He then offers sacrifices to his deceased ancestors before the
ancestral tablets, lighted candles in high brass candlesticks being
placed on each side of the bowls of sacrificial food or fruit, and
bowing profoundly, acquaints them with the important fact that he has
assumed the Top Knot. Afterwards he calls on the adult male friends
of his family, who for the first time receive him as an equal, and at
night there is a feast in his honor in his father’s house, to which all
the family friends who have attained to the dignity of Top Knots are
invited.

The hat is made of fine “crinoline” so that the Top Knot may be seen
very plainly through it, and weighs only an ounce and a half. It is
a source of ceaseless anxiety to the Korean. If it gets wet it is
ruined, so that he seldom ventures to stir abroad without a waterproof
cover for it in his capacious sleeve, and it is so easily broken and
crushed, that when not in use it must be kept or carried in a wooden
box, usually much decorated, as obnoxious in transit as a lady’s
bandbox. The keeping on the hat is a mark of respect. Court officials
appear in the sovereign’s presence with their hats on, and the Korean
only takes it off in the company of his most intimate friends. The
_mang-kun_ is a fixture. The Top Knot is often decorated with a bead of
jade, amber, or turquoise, and some of the young swells wear expensive
tortoise-shell combs as its ornaments. There is no other single article
of male equipment that I am aware of which plays so important a part,
or is regarded with such reverence, or is clung to so tenaciously, as
the Korean Top Knot.

On an “institution” so venerated and time-honored, and so bound up with
Korean nationality (for the Korean, though remarkably destitute of true
patriotism, has a strongly national instinct), the decree of the 30th
of December, 1895, practically abolishing the Top Knot, fell like a
thunderbolt. The measure had been advocated before, chiefly by Koreans
who had been in America, and was known to have Japanese support, and
had been discussed by the Cabinet, but the change was regarded with
such disgust by the nation at large that the Government was afraid
to enforce it. Only a short time before the decree was issued, three
chief officers of the _Kun-ren-tai_ entered the Council Chamber with
drawn swords, demanding the instantaneous issue of an edict making
it compulsory on every man in Government employment to have his hair
cropped, and the Ministers, terrified for their lives, all yielded but
one, and he succeeded for the time in getting the issue of it delayed
till after the Queen’s funeral. Very shortly afterwards, however, the
King, practically a prisoner, was compelled to endorse it, and he, the
Crown Prince, the Tai-Won-Kun, and the Cabinet were divested of their
Top Knots, the soldiers and police following suit.

The following day the _Official Gazette_ promulgated a decree, endorsed
by the King, announcing that he had cut his hair short, and calling on
all his subjects, officials and common people alike, to follow his
example and identify themselves with the spirit of progress which had
induced His Majesty to take this step, and thus place his country on a
footing of equality with the other nations of the world!

The Home Office notifications were as follows:--


_Translation_

 The present cropping of the hair being a measure both advantageous
 to the preservation of health and convenient for the transaction of
 business, our sacred Lord the King, having in view both administrative
 reform and national aggrandizement, has, by taking the lead in his
 own person, set us an example. All the subjects of Great Korea should
 respectfully conform to His Majesty’s purpose, and the fashion of
 their clothing should be as set forth below:--

 1. During national mourning the hat and clothing should, until the
 expiration of the term of mourning, be white in color as before.

 2. The fillet (_mang-kun_) should be abandoned.

 3. There is no objection to the adoption of foreign clothing.

  (Signed) YU-KIL CHUN,
  _Acting Home Minister_.

 11th moon, 15th day.

 No. 2

 In the Proclamation which His Majesty graciously issued to-day (11th
 moon, 15th day) are words, “We, in cutting Our hair, are setting an
 example to Our subjects. Do you, the multitude, identify yourselves
 with Our design, and cause to be accomplished the great work of
 establishing equality with the nations of the earth.”

 At a time of reform such as this, when we humbly peruse so spirited
 a proclamation, among all of us subjects of Great Korea who does not
 weep for gratitude, and strive his utmost? Earnestly united in heart
 and mind, we earnestly expect a humble conformity with His Majesty’s
 purposes of reformation.

  (Signed) YU-KIL CHUN,
  _Acting Home minister_.

  504th year since the founding of the Dynasty,
  11th moon, 15th day.

Among the reasons which rendered the Top Knot decree detestable to the
people were, that priests and monks, who, instead of being held in
esteem, are regarded generally as a nuisance to be tolerated, wear
their hair closely cropped, and the Edict was believed to be an attempt
instigated by Japan to compel Koreans to look like Japanese, and adopt
Japanese customs. So strong was the popular belief that it was to Japan
that Korea owed the denationalizing order, that in the many places
where there were Top Knot Riots it was evidenced by overt acts of
hostility to the Japanese, frequently resulting in murder.

The rural districts were convulsed. Officials even of the highest rank
found themselves on the horns of a dilemma. If they cut their hair,
they were driven from their lucrative posts by an infuriated populace,
and in several instances lost their lives, while if they retained the
Top Knot they were dismissed by the Cabinet. In one province, on the
arrival from Seoul of a newly-appointed mandarin with cropped hair,
he was met by a great concourse of people ready for the worst, who
informed him that they had hitherto been ruled by a Korean man, and
would not endure a “Monk Magistrate,” on which he prudently retired to
the capital.

All through the land there were Top Knot complexities and difficulties.
Countrymen, merchants, Christian catechists, and others, who had come
to Seoul on business, and had been shorn, dared not risk their lives
by returning to their homes. Wood and country produce did not come in,
and the price of the necessaries of life rose seriously. Many men who
prized the honor of entering the Palace gates at the New Year feigned
illness, but were sent for and denuded of their hair. The click of the
shears was heard at every gate in Seoul, at the Palace, and at the
official residences; even servants were not exempted, and some of the
Foreign Representatives were unable to present themselves at the Palace
on New Year’s Day, because their chairmen were unwilling to meet the
shears. A father poisoned himself from grief and humiliation because
his two sons had submitted to the decree. The foundations of social
order were threatened when the Top Knot fell!

People who had had their hair cropped did not dare to venture far
from Seoul lest they should be exposed to the violence of the rural
population. At Chun-chön, 50 miles from the capital, when the Governor
tried to enforce the ordinance, the people rose _en masse_ and murdered
him and his whole establishment, afterwards taking possession of the
town and surrounding country. As policemen with their shears were at
the Seoul gates to enforce the decree on incomers, and peasants who had
been cropped on arriving did not dare to return to their homes, prices
rose so seriously by the middle of January, 1896, that “trouble” in the
capital was expected, and another order was issued that “country folk
were to be let alone at that time.”

Things went from bad to worse, till on the 11th of February, 1896, the
whole Far East was electrified by a sensational telegram--“The King of
Korea has escaped from his Palace, and is at the Russian Legation.”

On that morning the King and Crown Prince in the dim daybreak left
the Kyeng-pok Palace in closed box chairs, such as are used by the
Palace waiting-women, passed through the gates without being suspected
by the sentries, and reached the Russian Legation, the King pale and
trembling as he entered the spacious suite of apartments which for more
than a year afterwards offered him a secure asylum. The Palace ladies
who arranged the escape had kept their counsel well, and had caused a
number of chairs to go in and out of the gates early and late during
the previous week, so that the flight failed to attract any attention.
As the King does much of his work at night and retires to rest in
the early morning, the ever vigilant Cabinet, his jailers, supposed
him to be asleep, and it was not until several hours later that his
whereabouts became known, when the organization of a new Cabinet was
progressing, and Korean dignitaries began to be summoned into the Royal
presence.

The King, on gaining security, at once reassumed his long-lost
prerogatives, which have never since been curbed in the slightest
degree. The irredeemable Orientalism of the two following proclamations
which were posted over the city within a few hours of his escape
warrants their insertion in full:--


ROYAL PROCLAMATION

_Translation_

 Alas! alas! on account of Our unworthiness and mal-administration the
 wicked advanced and the wise retired. Of the last ten years, none
 has passed without troubles. Some were brought on by those We had
 trusted as the members of the body, while others, by those of Our own
 bone and flesh. Our dynasty of five centuries has thereby been often
 endangered, and millions of Our subjects have thereby been gradually
 impoverished. These facts make Us blush and sweat for shame. But these
 troubles have been brought about through Our partiality and self-will,
 giving rise to rascality and blunders leading to calamities. All have
 been Our own fault from the first to the last.

 Fortunately, through loyal and faithful subjects rising up in
 righteous efforts to remove the wicked, there is a hope that the
 tribulations experienced may invigorate the State, and that calm may
 return after the storm. This accords with the principle that human
 nature will have freedom after a long pressure, and that the ways of
 Heaven bring success after reverses. We shall endeavor to be merciful.
 No pardon, however, shall be extended to the principal traitors
 concerned in the affairs of July, 1894, and of October, 1895. Capital
 punishment should be their due, thus venting the indignation of men
 and gods alike. But to all the rest, officials or soldiers, citizens
 or coolies, a general amnesty, free and full, is granted, irrespective
 of the degree of their offences. Reform your hearts; ease your minds;
 go about your business, public or private, as in times past.

 As to the cutting of the Top Knots--what can We say? Is it such an
 urgent matter? The traitors, by using force and coercion, brought
 about the affair. That this measure was taken against Our will is, no
 doubt, well known to all. Nor is it Our wish that the conservative
 subjects throughout the country, moved to righteous indignation,
 should rise up, as they have, circulating false rumors, causing death
 and injury to one another, until the regular troops had to be sent
 to suppress the disturbances by force. The traitors indulged their
 poisonous nature in everything. Fingers and hairs would fail to count
 their crimes. The soldiers are Our children. So are the insurgents.
 Cut any of the ten fingers, and one would cause as much pain as
 another. Fighting long continued would pour out blood and heap up
 corpses, hindering communications and traffic. Alas! if this continues
 the people will all die. The mere contemplation of such consequences
 provokes Our tears and chills Our heart. We desire that as soon as
 orders arrive the soldiers should return to Seoul and the insurgents
 to their respective places and occupations.

 As to the cutting of Top Knots, no one shall be forced as to dress and
 hats. Do as you please. The evils now afflicting the people shall be
 duly attended to by the Government. This is Our own word of honor. Let
 all understand.

  By order of His Majesty,
  (Signed) PAK-CHUNG YANG,
  _Acting Home and Prime Minister_.

  11th day, 2nd moon, 1st year of Kon-yang.


 PROCLAMATION TO THE SOLDIERS

 On account of the unhappy fate of Our country, traitors have made
 trouble every year. Now We have a document informing us of another
 conspiracy. We have therefore come to the Russian Legation. The
 Representatives of different countries have all assembled.

 Soldiers! come and protect us. You are Our children. The troubles
 of the past were due to the crimes of chief traitors. You are all
 pardoned, and shall not be held answerable. Do your duty and be at
 ease. When you meet the chief traitors, viz. Cho-hui Yen, Wu-pom Sun,
 Yi-tu Hwong, Yi-pom Nai, Yi-chin Ho, and Kon-yong Chin, cut off their
 heads at once, and bring them.

 You (soldiers) attend us at the Russian Legation.

 11th day, 2nd moon, 1st year of Kon-yang.

  Royal Sign.

Following on this, on the same day, and while thousands of people were
reading the repeal of the hair-cropping order, those of the Cabinet who
could be caught were arrested and beheaded in the street--the Prime
Minister, who had kept his place in several Cabinets, and the Minister
of Agriculture and Commerce. The mob, infuriated, and regarding the
Premier as the author of the downfall of the Top Knot, gave itself
up to unmitigated savagery, insulting and mutilating the dead bodies
in a manner absolutely fiendish. Another of the Cabinet was rescued
by Japanese soldiers, and the other traitorous members ran away. A
Cabinet, chiefly new, was installed, prison doors were opened, and the
inmates, guilty and innocent alike, were released, strict orders were
given by the King that the Japanese were to be protected, one having
already fallen a victim to the fury of the populace, and before night
fell on Seoul much of the work of the previous six months had been
undone, and the Top Knot had triumphed.[42]

How the Korean King, freed from the strong influence of the Queen and
the brutal control of his mutinous officers, used his freedom need
not be told here. It was supposed just after his escape that he would
become “a mere tool in the hands of the Russian Minister,” but so far
was this from being the case, that before a year had passed it was
greatly desired by many that Mr. Waeber would influence him against
the bad in statecraft and in favor of the good, and the cause of his
determination not to bias the King in any way remains a mystery to this
day.

The roads which led to the Russian Legation were guarded by Korean
soldiers, but eighty Russian marines were quartered in the compound
and held the gates, while a small piece of artillery was very much _en
évidence_ on the terrace below the King’s windows! He had an abundant
_entourage_. For some months the Cabinet occupied the ballroom, and on
the terrace and round the King’s apartments there were always numbers
of Court officials and servants of all grades, eunuchs, Palace women,
etc., while the favorites, the ladies Om and Pak, who assisted in his
escape, were constantly to be seen in his vicinity.

Revelling in the cheerfulness and security of his surroundings, the
King shortly built a Palace (to which he removed in the spring of
1897), surrounding the tablet-house of the Queen, and actually in
Chong-dong, the European quarter, its grounds adjoining those of the
English and U.S. Legations. To the security of this tablet-house the
remains of the Queen, supposed to consist only of the bones of one
finger, were removed on a lucky day chosen by the astrologers with much
pomp.

On this occasion a guard of eighty Russian soldiers occupied a position
close to the Royal tent, not far from one in which the Foreign
Representatives, with the noteworthy exception of the Japanese Envoy,
were assembled. Rolled-up scroll portraits of the five immediate
ancestors of the King, each enclosed in a large oblong palanquin of
gilded fretwork, and preceded by a crowd of officials in old Court
costume, filed past the Royal tent, where the King did obeisance, and
the Russian Guard presented arms. This was only the first part of the
ceremony.

Later a colossal catafalque, containing the fragmentary remains of the
murdered Queen, was dragged through the streets from the Kyeng-pok
Palace by 700 men in sackcloth, preceded and followed by a crowd of
Court functionaries, also in mourning, and escorted by Korean drilled
troops. The King and Crown Prince received the procession at the gate
of the new Kyeng-wun Palace, and the hearse, after being hauled up to
the end of a long platform outside the Spirit Shrine, was tracked by
ropes (for no hand might touch it) to the interior, where it rested
under a canopy of white silk, and for more than a year received the
customary rites and sacrifices from the bereaved husband and son. The
large crowd in the streets was orderly and silent. The ceremony was
remarkable both for the revival of picturesque detail and of practices
which it was supposed had become obsolete, such as the supporting of
officials on their ponies by retainers, or when on foot by having their
arms propped up.

In July, 1896, Mr. J. M’Leavy Brown, LL.D., Chief Commissioner of
Customs, received by Royal decree the absolute control of all payments
out of the Treasury, and having gained considerable insight into the
complexities of financial corruption, addressed himself in earnest to
the reform of abuses, and with most beneficial results.

In September a Council of State of fourteen members was substituted for
the Cabinet of Ministers organized under Japanese auspices, a change
which was to some extent a return to old methods.

Many of the attempts made by the Japanese during their ascendency to
reform abuses were allowed to lapse. The country was unsettled, a
“Righteous Army” having replaced the Tong-haks. The Minister of the
Household and other Royal favorites resumed the practice of selling
provincial and other posts in a most unblushing manner after the slight
checks which had been imposed on this most deleterious custom, and
the sovereign himself, whose Civil List is ample, appropriated public
moneys for his own purposes, while, finding himself personally safe,
and free from Japanese or other control, he reverted in many ways to
the traditions of his dynasty, and in spite of attempted checks upon
his authority, reigned as an absolute monarch--his edicts law, his
will absolute. Meanwhile Japan was gradually effacing herself or being
effaced, and whatever influence she lost in Korea, Russia gained, but
the advantages of the change were not obvious.


FOOTNOTES:

[41] In chapter ix. p. 114, there is a short notice of what is involved
in the transformation.

[42] When I last saw the King this national adornment seemed to have
resumed its former proportions.




CHAPTER XXXII

THE REORGANIZED KOREAN GOVERNMENT[43]


The old system of Government in Korea, which, with but a few
alterations and additions, prevailed from the founding of the present
dynasty until the second half of 1894, was modelled on that of the
Ming Emperors of China. The King was absolute as well in practice as
in theory, but to assist him in governing there was a _Eui-chyeng
Pu_, commonly translated Cabinet, composed of a so-called Premier,
and Senior and Junior Ministers of State, under whom were Senior and
Junior Chief Secretaries, and Senior and Junior Assistant Secretaries,
with certain minor functionaries, the Government being conducted
through Boards as in China, viz. Civil Office, Revenue, Ceremonies,
War, Punishment, and Works, to which were added after the opening
of the country to foreigners, Foreign and Home Offices. During the
present reign the Home Office, under the Presidency of a powerful and
ambitious cousin of the Queen, Min Yeng-chyun, began to draw to itself
all administrative power, while Her Majesty’s and his relations, who
occupied the chief positions throughout the country, fleeced the people
without restraint. Of the remaining offices which were seated in the
Metropolis the chief were the Correctional Tribunal, an office of the
first rank which took cognizance of the offences of officials, and the
Prefecture of Seoul which had charge of all municipal matters.

Korea was divided into eight Provinces, each under the control of
a Governor, aided by a Civil and Military Secretary. Magistrates
of different grades according to the size of the magistracies were
appointed under him, five fortress cities, however, being independent
of provincial jurisdiction. The principal tax, the land-tax, was paid
in kind, and the local governments had very considerable control over
the local revenues. There were provincial military and naval forces
with large staffs of officers, and Boards, Offices, and Departments
innumeral under Government, each with its legion of supernumeraries.

The country was eaten up by officialism. It is not only that abuses
without number prevailed, but the whole system of Government was an
abuse, a sea of corruption without a bottom or a shore, an engine of
robbery, crushing the life out of all industry. Offices and justice
were bought and sold like other commodities, and Government was fast
decaying, the one principle which survived being its right to prey on
the governed.

The new order of things, called by the Japanese the “Reformation,”
dates from the forcible occupation of the Kyeng-pok Palace by Japanese
troops on the 23rd of July, 1894. The constitutional changes which have
subsequently been promulgated (though not always carried out) were
initiated by the Japanese Minister in Seoul, and reduced to detail by
the Japanese “advisers” who shortly arrived; and Japan is entitled to
the credit of having attempted to cope with and remedy the manifold
abuses of the Korean system, and of having bequeathed to the country
the lines on which reforms are now being carried out. It was natural,
and is certainly not blameworthy, that the Japanese had in view the
assimilation of Korean polity to that of Japan.

To bring about the desired reorganization, Mr. Otori, at that time
the Japanese Minister, induced the King to create an Assembly, which,
whatever its ultimate destiny, was to form meanwhile a Department for
“the discussion of all matters grave and trivial within the realm.”
The Prime Minister was its President, and the number of its members
was limited to twenty Councillors. A noteworthy feature in connection
with it was that it invited suggestions from outsiders in the form of
written memoranda.

It met for the first time on the 30th of July, 1894, and for the last
on the 29th of October of the same year. It was found impossible,
either by payment or Royal orders, to secure a quorum; and after the
Vice-Minister of Justice, one of the few Councillors who took an active
part in the proceedings, was murdered two days after the last meeting,
as was believed, by an agent of the reactionary party, it practically
expired, and was dissolved by Royal Decree on the 17th of December,
1894, and a reconstituted Privy Council took its place. Those of its
Resolutions, however, which had received the Royal assent became law,
and unless repealed or superseded are still binding.

These Resolutions appeared in the _Government Gazette_, an institution
of very old standing, imitated, like most things else, from China. This
was prepared by the Court of Transmission, a Palace Department, the
senior members of which formed the channel of communication between
the King and the official body at large, and who, while other high
officials could only reach the throne by means of personal memorials
or written memoranda, were privileged to address the King _viva voce_,
and through whom as a rule his commands were issued. Each day this
Department collected the various memoranda and memorials, the Royal
replies and the lists of appointments, copies of which when edited
by it formed the _Gazette_, which was furnished in MS. to officials
throughout the kingdom. The Royal Edicts when published in this paper
became law in Korea.

In July, 1894, Mr. Otori made the useful innovation of publishing the
_Gazette_ in clear type, and in the following January it appeared in
a mixture of Chinese hieroglyphs and _En-mun_, the “vulgar script” of
Korea, and became intelligible to the common people. No special change
was made at that time, except that the Resolutions of the Deliberative
Assembly were included in it. Later changes have assimilated it farther
to the Government _Gazette_ of Japan, and it has gained rather than
lost in importance. Gradually a diminution of the power of the Court
of Transmission began to show itself. Its name was changed to the
Receiving Office, and members of the Cabinet and the Correctional
Tribunal began to enjoy direct access to the King. In April, 1895, a
farther change in a Japanese direction, and one of great significance
in Korean estimation, was made, the date of the _Gazette_ being given
thus:--

“No. 1.--504th year of the Dynasty, 4th moon, 1st day, Wood-day.”[44]

Two months later farther changes in the official _Gazette_ were
announced, and the programme then put forward has been adhered to,
paving the way for many of the changes which have followed. It is
difficult to make the importance of the _Gazette_ intelligible, except
to foreigners who have resided in China and Korea. The reason for
dwelling so long upon it is, that for several centuries the publication
in it of Royal Edicts has given them the force of law and the currency
of Acts of Parliament.

In the pages which follow a brief summary is given of the outlines of
the scheme for the reorganization of the Korean Government, which
was prepared for the most part by the Japanese advisers, honorary and
salaried, who have been engaged on the task since 1894, and which has
been accepted by the King.

The first change raised the status of the King and the Royal Family
to that of the Imperial Family of China. After this, it was enacted,
following on the King’s Oath of January, 1895, that the Queen and
Royal Family were no longer to interfere in the affairs of State, and
that His Majesty would govern by the advice of a Cabinet, and sign all
ordinances to which his assent is given. The Cabinet, which was, at
least nominally, located in the Palace, had two aspects--a Council of
State, and a State Department, presided over by the Premier.


I.--AS THE COUNCIL OF STATE

The members of the Cabinet or Ministers of State were the Premier, the
Home Minister, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Finance Minister,
the War Minister, the Minister of Education, the Minister of Justice,
and the Minister of Agriculture, Trade and Industry. A Foreign Adviser
is supposed to be attached to each of the seven Departments.

Ministers in Council were empowered to consider--the framing of laws
and ordinances; estimates and balance-sheets of yearly revenue and
expenditure; public debt, domestic and foreign; international treaties
and important conventions; disputes as to the respective jurisdictions
of Ministers; such personal memorials as His Majesty might send
down to them; supplies not included in the estimates; appointments
and promotions of high officials, other than legal or military;
the retention, abolition, or alteration of old customs; abolition
or institution of offices, and, without reference to their special
relations to any one Ministry, their reconstruction or amendment;
the imposition of new taxes or their alteration; and the control and
management of public lands, forests, buildings, and vessels. All
ordinances after being signed and sealed by the King required the
countersign of the Premier.

The second function of the Cabinet as a Department of State it is
needless to go into.

A Privy Council was established at the close of 1894 to take the place
of the Deliberative Assembly which had collapsed, and is now empowered,
when consulted by the Cabinet, to inquire into and pass resolutions
concerning:--

I. The framing of laws and ordinances.

II. Questions which may from time to time be referred to it by the
Cabinet.

The Council consists of a President, Vice-President, not more than
fifty Councillors, two Secretaries, and four Clerks. The Councillors
are appointed by the Crown on the recommendation of the Premier, and
must either be men of rank, or those who have done good service to
the State, or are experts in politics, law, or economics. The Privy
Council is prohibited from having any correspondence on public matters
with private individuals, or with any officials but Ministers and
Vice-Ministers. The President presides. Two-thirds of the members must
be present to form a quorum. Votes are given openly, resolutions are
carried by a majority, and any Councillor dissenting from a resolution
so carried has a right to have his reasons recorded in the minutes.

In the autumn of 1896 some important changes were made. A Decree
of the 24th of September condemned in strong language the action
of “disorderly rebels, who some three years ago revolutionized the
Constitution,” and changed the name of the King’s advising body.
The decree ordained that the old name, translated Council of State,
“should be restored, and declared that new regulations would be issued,
which, while adhering to ancient principles, would confirm such of the
enactments of the previous three years as in the King’s judgment were
for the public good.” The Council of State was organized by the first
ordinance of a new series, and the preamble, as well as one at least
of the sections, marks a distinctly retrograde movement and a reversion
to the absolutism renounced in the King’s Oath of January, 1895.[45]
It is distinctly stated that “any motion debated at the Council may
receive His Majesty’s assent, without regard to the number of votes in
its favor, by virtue of the Royal prerogative; or should the debates
on any motion not accord with His Majesty’s views, the Council may
be commanded to reconsider the matter.” Resolutions which the King
approves, on publication in the _Gazette_, become law.

Thus perished the checks which the Japanese sought to impose on the
absolutism of the Crown, and at the present time the Royal will (or
whim) can and does override all else.

This _Eui-chyeng Pu_ or Council, like the _Nai Kak_, its predecessor,
is both a Council of State, and a State Department presided over by the
Chancellor. The members of the Council of State are the Chancellor, the
Home Minister, who is, _ex officio_, Vice-Chancellor, the Ministers
of Foreign Affairs, Finance, War, Justice, and Agriculture, five
Councillors, and the Chief Secretary. As a State Department under the
Chancellor, the staff consists of the “Director of the General Bureau,”
the Chancellor’s Private Secretary, the Secretary, and eight clerks.

The Council of State, as now constituted, is empowered, to pass
resolutions concerning the enactment, abrogation, alteration, or
interpretation of laws or regulations; peace and war and the making
of treaties; restoration of domestic order; telegraphs, railways,
mines, and other undertakings, and questions of compensation arising
therefrom; the estimates and special appropriations; taxes, duties,
and excise; matters sent down to the Council by special command of the
Sovereign; publication of laws and regulations approved by the King.

The King, if he so pleases, is present in person, or may send the
Heir-Apparent to represent him. The Chancellor presides, two-thirds of
the members from a quorum, motions are carried by a numerical majority,
and finally a memorial stating in outline the debate and its issue is
submitted by the Chancellor to the King, who issues such commands as
may seem to him best, for, as previously stated, His Majesty is not
bound to acquiesce in the decision of the majority.

The _Eui-chyeng Pu_ as a Department of State through the “Director
of the General Bureau” has three sections--Archives, Gazette, and
Accounts, and is rather a recording than an initiating office.

The scheme for the reconstruction of the Provincial and Metropolitan
Governments has introduced many important changes and retrenchments.
The thirteen Provinces are now divided into 339 Prefectures, Seoul
having a Government of its own. The vast _entourage_ of provincial
authorities has been reduced, and a Provincial Governor’s staff is
now limited, nominally at least, to six clerks, two chief constables,
thirty police, ten writers, four ushers, fifteen messengers, eight
coolies, and eight boys. Ordinances under the head of “Local
Government” define the jurisdiction, powers, duties, period of office,
salaries, and etiquette[46] of all officials, along with many minor
matters. It is in this Department that the reforms instituted by the
Japanese are the most sweeping. Very many offices were abolished,
and all Government property belonging to the establishments of the
officials holding them was ordered to be handed over to officers of
the new _régime_. A Local Government Bureau was established with
sections, under which local finance in cities and towns and local
expenditure of every kind were to be dealt with. An Engineering Bureau
dealing with civil engineering and a Land Survey, a Registration Bureau
dealing with an annual census of the population and the registration
of lands, a Sanitary Bureau, and an Accounts Bureau form part of the
very ambitious Local Government scheme, admirable on paper, and which,
if it were honestly carried out, would strike at the roots of many of
the abuses which are the curse of Korea. The whole provincial system as
reorganized is under the Home Office.

An important part of the new scheme is the definition of the duties and
jurisdiction of the Ministers of State. The Cabinet Orders dealing with
the duties and discipline of officials at large so far issued are:--

  Order 1. General rules for the conduct of public business.
    “   2. Memorabilia for officials.
    “   3. Resumption of office after mourning.
    “   4. Reprimand and correction.
    “   5. Obligation to purchase the _Gazette_.
    “   6. Memorials to be on ruled paper.

The management of public offices under the new system is practically
the same as the Japanese.

The _Memorabilia for Officials_ are as follows:--

 (_a_) No official must trespass outside his own jurisdiction.

 (_b_) Where duties have been deputed to a subordinate, the latter must
 not be continually interfered with.

 (_c_) A subordinate ordered to do anything which in his opinion is
 irregular or irrelevant should expostulate with his senior. If the
 latter holds by his opinion, the junior must conform.

 (_d_) Officials must be straightforward and outspoken, and not give
 outward acquiescence while privately criticising or hindering their
 superiors.

 (_e_) Officials must not listen to suggestions from outsiders or talk
 with them on official business.

 (_f_) Officials must be frank with one another, and not form cliques.

 (_g_) No official must wilfully spread false rumors about another or
 lightly credit such.

 (_h_) No official must absent himself from office without permission
 during office hours, or frequent the houses of others.

Resolution 88, passed some months earlier, was even more explicit:--

 Officials are thereby forbidden to divulge official secrets even when
 witnesses in a court of law, unless specially permitted to do so;
 or to show despatches to outsiders. They are not allowed to become
 directors or managers in a public company; to accept compensation from
 private individuals or gifts from their subordinates; to undertake,
 without permission, extra work for payment; or to put to private use
 Government horses. They may receive honors or presents from foreign
 Sovereigns or Governments only with the special sanction of His
 Majesty.

An ordinance restored the use of the uniforms worn prior to the
“Reformation,” whether Court dress, full dress, half-dress, or undress,
and announced that neither officials nor private persons were to be
compelled any longer to wear black.

Each Department is presided over by a Minister, who is empowered to
issue Departmental Orders, as Instructions to the local officials and
police, and Notifications to the people. His jurisdiction over the
police and local officials is concurrent with that of his colleagues,
who must also be consulted by him before recommending to the Throne the
promotion or degradation of the higher officials of his Departmental
Staff.

Under the Minister is a Vice-Minister, empowered to act for him
on occasion, and, when doing so, possessing equal privileges. The
Vice-Minister is usually the head of the Minister’s Secretariat, which
deals with “confidential matters, promotions, custody of the Minister’s
and Departmental Seals, receipt and despatch of correspondence, and
consultation of precedents, preparation of statistics, compilation and
preservation of archives.”

In addition to the Secretariats, there are a number of Bureaux, both
Secretariats and Bureaux being, for convenience, subdivided into
sections, each of which has its special duties.

The Departments of Government are as follows:--


HOME OFFICE

The Home Minister has charge of matters concerning local government,
police, jails, civil engineering, sanitation, shrines and temples,
surveying, printing census, and public charity, as well as the general
supervision of the local authorities and the police.


FOREIGN OFFICE

The Foreign Minister is vested with the control of international
affairs, the protection of Korean commercial interests abroad, and the
supervision of the Diplomatic and Consular Services.


THE TREASURY

“The Minister for Finance, being vested with the control of the
finances of the Government, will have charge of all matters relating
to accounts, revenue, and expenditure, taxes, national debts, the
currency, banks, and the like, and will have supervision over the
finances of each local administration” (Ord. 54, § I).

Under this Minister there is a Taxation Bureau with three
sections--Land Tax, Excise, and Customs.[47] The ordinances connected
with the remodelled system of taxation and the salaries and expenses of
officials are very numerous and minute. The appropriation actually in
money for the Sovereign’s Privy Purse was fixed at $500,000.


WAR OFFICE

The Minister for War, who must be a general officer, has charge of
the military administration of an army lately fixed at 6,000 men, and
the chief control of men and matters in the army, and is to exercise
supervision over army divisions, and all buildings and forts under his
Department. The new military arrangements are very elaborate.


MINISTRY OF EDUCATION

In this important Department, besides the Minister and Vice-Minister
and heads of Bureaux and Sections, there are three special Secretaries
who act as Inspectors of Schools, and an official specially deputed to
compile and select text-books.

Besides the Minister’s Secretariat, there are the _Education Bureau_,
which is concerned with primary, normal, intermediary, foreign
language, technical and industrial schools, and students abroad; and a
_Compilation Bureau_, concerned with the selection, translation, and
compilation of text-books; the purchase, preservation, and arrangement
of volumes, and the printing of books.

Under this Department has been placed the Confucian College, an
institution of the old _régime_, the purpose of which was to attend to
the Temple of Literature, in which, as in China, the Memorial Tablets
of Confucius, Mencius, and the Sages are honored, and to encourage the
study of the classical books. The subjects for study are the “Three
Classics,” “Four Books and Popular Commentary,” Chinese Composition,
Outlines of Chinese History--of the Sung, Yüan, and Ming Dynasties.
To meet the reformed requirements, this College has been reorganized,
and the students, who must be between the ages of twenty and forty,
“of good character, persevering, intelligent, and well acquainted with
affairs,” are in addition put through a course of Korean and foreign
annals, Korean and foreign geography, and arithmetic.


MINISTRY OF JUSTICE

The Minister of Justice has charge of judicial matters, pardons
and restorations to rank, instructions for public prosecution, and
supervision over Special Courts, High Courts, and District Courts; and
the Department forms a High Court of Justice for the hearing of certain
appeals.


MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND INDUSTRY

The Minister of Agriculture has charge of all matters relating to
agriculture, commerce, industries, posts, telegraphs, shipping, and
marine officers.

In this Department, besides the Minister’s Secretariat, there are
Bureaux of Agriculture, Communications, Trade, Industry, Mining, and
Accounts. The Bureau of Agriculture contains Agricultural, Forest, and
Natural Products sections; that of Communications, Post, Telegraph,
and Marine sections; and that of Trade and Industry deals with
Commerce, Trading Corporations, Weights and Measures, Manufactures, and
Factories. The Mining Bureau has sections for Mines and Geology, and
the Bureau of Accounts deals with the inventories and expenditure of
the Department.


THE VILLAGE SYSTEM

Besides the Reorganization of these important Departments of State, a
design for a “Village System,” organized as follows, is to supersede
that which had decayed with the general decay of Government in Korea.

The country is now divided into districts (_Kun_), each _Kun_
containing a number of _myen_ or cantons, each of which includes a
number of _ni_ or villages. The old posts and titles are abolished,
and each village is now to be provided with the following officers:--

1. _Headman._--He must be over thirty years of age, and is elected for
one year by the householders. The office is honorary.

2. _Clerk._--He holds office under the same conditions as the Headman,
under whom he keeps the books and issues notices.

3. _Elder._--Nominated by the householders, he acts for the Headman as
occasion demands.

4. _Bailiff._--Elected at the same time as the Headman he performs the
usual duties of a servant or messenger, and holds office for a year on
good behavior.

The corresponding officers of the canton (commune) are a _Mayor_, a
_Clerk_, a _Bailiff_, and a _Communal Usher_ who is irremovable except
for cause given, and is, like the other officials, elected by the
canton.

A Village Council is composed of the Headman and one man from each
family, and is empowered to pass resolutions on matters connected with
education, registration of households or lands, sanitation, roads and
bridges, communal grain exchanges, agricultural improvements, common
woods and dykes, payment of taxes, relief in famine or other calamity,
adjustment of the _corvée_, savings associations, and by-laws. The
Headman, who acts as chairman, has not only a casting vote, but the
power to veto. A resolution passed over the veto of the Headman has
to be referred to the Mayor, and over the veto of the Mayor to the
Prefect. If passed twice over the veto of the Prefect, reference may be
made to the Governor. All resolutions, however, must be submitted twice
a year to the Home Office, through the Prefect and Governor; and it is
incumbent on the Prefectural Council to sit at least twice in the year.

Taxes are by a law of 13th October, 1895, classified as Land-Tax,
Scutage, Mining Dues, Customs Dues, and Excise. Excise is now made to
include, besides ginseng dues, what are known as “Miscellaneous Dues,”
viz. rent of glebe lands, tax on rushes used in mat-making, market
dues on firewood and tobacco, tax on kilns, tax on edible seaweed, tax
on grindstones, up-river dues, and taxes on fisheries, salterns, and
boats. All other imposts have been declared illegal. The first Korean
Budget under the reformed system was published in January, 1896, and
showed an estimated revenue from all sources of $4,809,410.

The Palace Department underwent reorganization, nominally at least,
and elaborate schemes for the administration of Royal Establishments,
State Temples, and Mausolea were devised, and the relative rank of
members of the Royal Clan, including ladies, was fixed--the ladies of
the King’s Seraglio being divided into eight classes, and those of the
Crown Prince into four. The number of Court officials attached to the
different Royal Households, though diminished, is legion.

Various ordinances brought the classification of Korean officials into
line with those of Japan. Every class in the country, private and
official, has come into the purview of the Reorganizers, and finds its
position (_on paper_) more or less altered.

Among the more important of the Edicts which have nominally become law
are the following:--

Agreements with China cancelled. Distinctions between Patrician and
Plebeian abolished. Slavery abolished. Early Marriages prohibited.
Remarriage of widows permitted. Bribery to be strictly forbidden.
No one to be arrested without warrant for civil offences. Couriers,
mountebanks, and butchers no longer to be under degradation. Local
Councils to be established. New coinage issued. Organization of Police
force. No one to be punished without trial. Irregular taxation by
Provincial Governments forbidden. Extortion of money by officials
forbidden. Family of a criminal not to be involved in his doom. Great
modifications as to torture. Superfluous Paraphernalia abolished.
School of Instruction in Vaccination. Hair-cropping Proclamation. Solar
Calendar adopted. “Drilled Troops” (_Kun-ren-tai_) abolished. Legal
punishments defined. Slaughter-Houses licensed. Committee of Legal
Revision appointed. Telegraph Regulations. Postal Regulations. Railways
placed under Bureau of Communications. These ordinances are a selection
from among several hundred promulgated since July, 1894.

Of the reforms notified during the last three and a half years
several have not taken effect; and concerning others there has been a
distinctly retrograde movement, with a tendency to revert to the abuses
of the old _régime_; and others which were taken in hand earnestly,
have gradually collapsed, owing in part to the limpness of the Korean
character, and in part to the opposition of all in office and of all
who hope for office to any measures of reform. Some, admirable in
themselves, at present exist only on paper; but, on the whole, the
reorganized system, though in many respects fragmentary, is a great
improvement on the old one; and it may not unreasonably be hoped that
the young men, who are now being educated in enlightened ideas and
notions of honor, will not repeat the iniquities of their fathers.


FOOTNOTES:

[43] The chapters on the Reorganized Korean Government--Education,
Trade, and Finance--and Dæmonism are intended to aid in the intelligent
understanding of those which precede them. The reader who wishes to
go into the subject of the old and the reorganized systems of Korean
Government will find a mass of curious and deeply interesting detail
in a volume entitled, _Korean Government_, by W. H. Wilkinson, Esq.,
lately H.B.M.’s Acting Vice-Consul at Chemulpo, published by the
Statistical Department of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs at
Shanghai in March, 1897. To it I am very greatly indebted.

[44] Wood-day is the term adopted by the Japanese for Thursday, their
week, which has now been imposed on the Koreans, being Sun-day,
Moon-day, Fire-day, Water-day, Wood-day, Metal-day, and Earth-day.

[45] See p. 250.

[46] _Official Intercourse._ Ord. 45 amends some old practices
regulating the intercourse and correspondence of officials. The
etiquette of the official call by a newly-appointed Prefect on the
Governor, on the whole, is retained, although it is in some respects
simplified. The old fashion obliged the Magistrate to remain outside
the _yamen_ gate, while a large folded sheet of white paper inscribed
with his name, was sent in to the Governor. The latter thereupon gave
orders to his personal attendants or ushers to admit the Magistrate.
The _t’oin_, as they were commonly styled, called out “_Sa-ryeng_,”
to which the servants chanted a reply. The Governor being seated, the
Magistrate knelt outside the room and bowed to the ground. To this
obeisance the Governor replied by raising his arms over his head.
The Magistrate was asked his name and age, given some stereotyped
advice, and dismissed. The Governor is for the future to return the
bow of the Prefect, and conversation is to be conducted in terms of
mutual respect, the Magistrate describing himself as _ha-koan_ (“your
subordinate”), and addressing the Governor by his title.

[47] The finances of Korea are now practically under British
management, Mr. J. M’Leavy Brown, LL.D., of the Chinese Imperial
Maritime Customs, and Chief Commissioner of Customs for Korea, having
undertaken in addition the post of Financial Adviser to the Treasury,
and a Royal Edict having been issued that every order for a payment out
of the national purse, down to the smallest, should be countersigned by
him.




CHAPTER XXXIII

EDUCATION AND FOREIGN TRADE


Korean education has hitherto failed to produce patriots, thinkers, or
honest men. It has been conducted thus. In an ordinary Korean school
the pupils, seated on the floor with their Chinese books in front of
them, the upper parts of their bodies swaying violently from side to
side or backwards and forwards, from daylight till sunset, vociferate
at the highest and loudest pitch of their voices their assigned lessons
from the Chinese classics, committing them to memory or reciting them
aloud, writing the Chinese characters, filling their receptive memories
with fragments of the learning of the Chinese sages and passages of
mythical history, the begoggled teacher, erudite and supercilious, rod
in hand and with a book before him, now and then throwing in a word of
correction in stentorian tones which rise above the din.

This educational mill grinding for ten or more years enabled the
average youth to aspire to the literary degrees which were conferred
at the _Kwa-ga_ or Royal Examinations held in Seoul up to 1894, and
which were regarded as the stepping-stones to official position, the
great object of Korean ambition. There is nothing in this education
to develop the thinking powers or to enable the student to understand
the world he lives in. The effort to acquire a difficult language,
the knowledge of which gives him a mastery of his own, is in itself a
desirable mental discipline, and the ethical teachings of Confucius and
Mencius, however defective, contain much that is valuable and true, but
beyond this little that is favorable can be said.

Narrowness, grooviness, conceit, superciliousness, a false pride which
despises manual labor, a selfish individualism, destructive of generous
public spirit and social trustfulness, a slavery in act and thought to
customs and traditions 2,000 years old, a narrow intellectual view, a
shallow moral sense, and an estimate of women essentially degrading,
appear to be the products of the Korean educational system.

With the abolition of the Royal Examinations; a change as to the
methods of Government appointments; the working of the Western leaven;
the increased prominence given to _En-mun_, and the slow entrance of
new ideas into the country, some of the desire for this purely Chinese
education has passed away, and it has been found necessary to stimulate
what threatened to become a flagging interest in all education by new
educational methods and forces, the influence of which should radiate
from the capital.

There are now (October, 1897) Government Vernacular Schools, a
Government School for the study of English, Foreign Language Schools,
and Mission Schools. Outside the Vernacular and Mission Schools there
is the before-mentioned Royal English School, with 100 students in
uniform, regularly drilled by a British Sergeant of Marines, and
crazy about football! These young men, in appearance, manners, and
rapid advance in knowledge of English, reflect great credit on their
instructors. After this come Japanese, French, and Russian Schools,
at present chiefly linguistic. Mr. Birukoff, in charge of the Russian
School, was a captain of light artillery in the Russian army, and in
both the Russian and French schools the students are drilled daily by
Russian drill instructors.

Undoubtedly the establishment which has exercised and is exercising
the most powerful educational, moral, and intellectual influence in
Korea is the Pai Chai College (“Hall for the rearing of Useful Men”),
so named by the King in 1887. This, which belongs to the American
Methodist Episcopal Church, has had the advantage of the services
of one Principal, the Rev. H. G. Appenzeller, for eleven years. It
has a Chinese-_En-mun_ department, for the teaching of the Chinese
classics, Sheffield’s _Universal History_, etc., a small theological
department, and an English department, in which reading, grammar,
composition, spelling, history, geography, arithmetic, and the elements
of chemistry and natural philosophy are taught. Dr. Jaisohn, a Korean
educated in America, has recently lectured once a week at this College
on the geographical divisions of the earth and the political and
ecclesiastical history of Europe, and has awakened much enthusiasm.
A patriotic spirit is being developed among the students, as well as
something of the English public school spirit with its traditions of
honor. This College is undoubtedly making a decided impression, and
is giving, besides a liberal education, a measure of that broader
intellectual view and deepened moral sense which may yet prove the
salvation of Korea. Christian instruction is given in Korean, and
attendance at chapel is compulsory. The pupils are drilled, and early
in 1897, during the military craze, adopted a neat European military
uniform. There is a flourishing industrial department, which includes a
tri-lingual press and a book-binding establishment, both of which have
full employment.

Early in 1895 the Government, recognizing the importance of the secular
education given in this College, made an agreement by which it could
place pupils up to the number of 200 there, paying for their tuition
and the salaries of certain tutors.

There are other schools for girls and boys, in which an industrial
training is given, conducted with some success by the same Mission, and
the American Presbyterians have several useful schools, and pay much
attention to the training of girls.

The _Société des Missions Etrangères_ has in Seoul an Orphanage and
two Boys’ Schools, with a total of 262 children. The principal object
is to train the orphans as good Roman Catholics. In the Boys’ Schools
the pupils are taught to read and write Chinese and _En-mun_, and
to a limited extent they study the Chinese classics. The religious
instruction is given in _En-mun_. They aim at providing a primary
education for the children of Korean converts.

The boys in the Orphanage are taught _En-mun_ only, and at thirteen are
adopted by Roman Catholics in Seoul or the country, and learn either
farming or trades, or, assuming their own support, enter a trade or
become servants. The elder girls learn _Em-mun_, sewing, and housework,
and at fifteen are married to the sons of Roman Catholics. At Riong
San near Seoul there is a Theological Seminary for the training of
candidates for the priesthood.

Besides these there is a school established in 1896 by the “Japanese
Foreign Educational Society,” which is composed chiefly of “advanced”
Japanese Christians. The course of study embraces the Chinese classics,
_En-mun_, composition, the study of Japanese as a medium for the study
of Western learning, and lectures on science and religion. This school
was intended by its founders to work as a Christian propaganda.

In 1897 there were in Seoul nearly 900 students, chiefly young men,
in Mission and Foreign Schools, inclusive of 100 in the Royal English
School, which has English teachers. In the majority of these the
students are trained in Christian morality, fundamental science,
general history, and the principles of patriotism. A certain amount of
denationalization is connected with most of the Boys’ Schools, for the
students necessarily receive new ideas, thoughts, and views of life,
which cannot be shaken out of them by any local circumstances, changing
their standpoints and the texture of their minds for life. When they
replace the elder generation better things may be expected for Korea.

The Korean reformed ideas of education, which had their origin during
the Japanese reform era, embrace the creation of a primary school
system, an efficient Normal College, and Intermediate Schools. Actually
existing under the Department of Education are a revived Confucian
School, the Royal English School, and the Normal College, placed in
May, 1897, under the very efficient care of the Rev. H. B. Hulbert,
M.A., a capable and scholarly man, some of whose contributions to our
knowledge of Korean poetry and music have enriched earlier chapters
of these volumes. Text-books in _En-mun_ and teachers who can teach
them have to be created. It is hoped and expected that supply will
follow demand, and that in a few years the larger provincial towns
will possess Intermediate or High Schools, and the villages attain
the advantages of elementary schools, all using a uniform series
of text-books in the vernacular. Chinese finds its place in the
curriculum, but not as the medium for teaching Korean and general
history, or geography and arithmetic, which must be acquired through
the native tongue.

In spite of the somewhat spasmodic and altogether unscientific methods
of the Education Department, it has succeeded in getting the revived
Normal College under way, as well as a fair number of primary schools,
where over 1,000 boys are learning the elements of arithmetic,
geography, and Korean history, with brief outlines of the systems of
government in other civilized countries. Seventy-seven youths are
studying in Japan at Government expense, and have made fair progress
in languages, but are said to show a lack of mathematical aptitude and
logical power. Altogether the Korean educational outlook is not without
elements of hopefulness.

Though the Foreign Trade of Korea only averages something less than
£1,500,000 annually, the potential commerce of a country with not less
than 12,000,000 of people, all cotton-clad, ought not to be overlooked.
The amount of foreign trade which exists is the growth of thirteen
years only, but when we remember that Korea is a purely agricultural
country of a very primitive and backward type, that many of her finest
valleys are practically isolated by mountain ranges, traversed by
nearly impassable roads, that the tyranny of custom is strong, that
the Korean farmer is only just learning that a profitable and almost
unlimited demand exists for his rice and beans across the sea, that
the serious cost of his cotton clothing can be kept down by importing
foreign yarn or piece goods, and that his comfort can be increased by
the introduction of articles of foreign manufacture, and that such
facts are only slowly entering the secluded valleys of the Hermit
Kingdom, the actual bulk of the trade is rather surprising, and its
possibilities are worth considering. The net imports of foreign goods
have increased from the value of $2,474,189 in 1886 to $6,531,324 in
1896.[48] Measured in dollars, the trade of 1896 exceeds that of any
previous year except 1895, when the occupation of Korea by Japanese
troops, with their large following of transport coolies, created an
artificial expansion.

Among Korean exports, which chiefly consist of beans, fish (dried
manure), cow-hides, ginseng, paper, rice, and seaweed, there are none
which are likely to find a market elsewhere than in China and Japan,
but Korea, so far as rice goes, is on the way to become the granary
of the latter country, her export in 1890 having reached the value of
£271,000.

With imports, European countries, India, and America are concerned.
Without, I think, being over sanguine, I anticipate a time when, with
improved roads, railroads, and enlightenment, together with security
for the earnings of labor from official and patrician exactions, the
Korean will have no further occasion for protecting himself by an
appearance of squalid poverty, and when he will become on a largely
increased scale a consumer as well as a producer, and will surround
himself with comforts and luxuries of foreign manufacture, as his
brethren are already doing under the happier rule of Russia. Under
the improved conditions which it is reasonable to expect, I should
not be surprised if the value of the Foreign Trade of Korea were to
reach £10,000,000 in another quarter of a century, and the share which
England is to have of it is an important question.

Our great competitor in the Korean markets is Japan, and we have to
deal not only with a rival within twenty hours of Korean shores,
and with nearly a monopoly of the carrying trade, but with the most
nimble-witted, adaptive, persevering, and pushing people of our day. It
is inevitable that British hardware and miscellaneous articles must be
ousted by the products of Japanese cheaper labor, and that the Japanese
will continue to supply the increasing demand for scissors, knives,
matches, needles, hoes, grass knives, soap, perfumes, kerosene lamps,
iron cooking-pots, nails, and the like, but the loss of the trade in
cotton piece goods would be a serious matter, and the possibility of it
has to be faced.

The value of the import trade in 1896 was £708,461 as against £875,816
for 1895 (an exceptional year), and the larger part of this reduction
took place in articles of British manufacture, the decrease of £134,304
in the value of cotton imports falling almost entirely on cottons of
British origin, the Japanese import not only retaining its position in
spite of adverse circumstances, but showing a slight increase. Japanese
sheetings showed a substantial increase, more than counterbalanced
by the diminished import of the British and American article, and
Japanese cotton yarn continued to arrive in larger quantities, and is
gradually driving British and Indian yarn out of the Korean market. It
can be sold at a considerably lower price than the British article, and
practically at the same price as the Indian, with which its improved
quality enables it to compete on very favorable terms.

As the result of inquiries carried on during my two journeys in the
interior, as well as at the treaty ports, it does not appear to me
that Japanese success is even chiefly caused by proximity, and in 1896
she had to compete with the enterprise and energy of the Chinese, who,
having returned after the war to the benefits of British protection,
were pushing the distribution of Manchester goods imported from
Shanghai.

Rather I am inclined to think that the success of our rival is mainly
due to causes which I have seen in operation in Persia and Central Asia
as well as in Korea, and which embrace not only imperfect knowledge
of the tastes and needs of customers, but the neglect to act upon
information supplied by consular and diplomatic agents, a groovy
adherence to British methods of manufacture, and the ignoring of native
desires as to colors, patterns, and the widths and makes which suit
native clothing and treatment, and the size of bales best suited to
native methods of transport. I do not allude to the charge ofttimes
made against our manufacturers of supplying inferior cottons, because
I have never seen any indications of its correctness, nor have I heard
any complaints on the subject either in Korea or China, but of the
ignoring of the requirements of customers there is no doubt. It is
everywhere a grievance and source of loss, and is likely to lose us the
prospective advantages of the Korean market.

The Japanese success, putting the advantages of proximity aside, is,
I believe, mainly due to the accuracy of the information obtained by
their keen-witted agents, who have visited all the towns and villages
in Korea, and to the carefulness with which their manufacturers are
studying the tastes and requirements of the Korean market. Their goods
reach the shore in manageable bales, which do not require to be adapted
after arrival to the minute Korean pony, and their price, width,
length, and texture commend them to the Korean consumer. The Japanese
understand that cotton 18 inches wide is the only cotton from which
Korean garments can be fashioned without very considerable waste, and
they supply the market with it; and on the report of the agents of the
importing firms, the weavers of Osaka and other manufacturing towns
with adroitness and rapidity closely adapted the texture, width, and
length of their cottons to those of the hand-loom cotton goods made in
South Korea, which are deservedly popular for their durability, and
have succeeded not only in producing an imitation of Korean cotton
cloth, which stands the pounding and beating of Korean washing, but
one which actually deceives the Korean weavers themselves as to its
origin, and which has won great popularity with the Korean women. If
Korea is to be a British market in the future, the lost ground must
be recovered by working on Japanese lines, which are the lines of
commercial common sense.

To sum up, I venture to express the opinion that the circumstances of
the large population of Korea are destined to gradual improvement with
the aid of either Japan or Russia, that foreign trade must increase
more or less steadily with increased buying powers and improved means
of transport, and that the amount which falls to the share of Great
Britain will depend largely upon whether British manufacturers are
willing or not to adapt their goods to Korean tastes and convenience.

As instances of the aptitude of the Koreans for taking to foreign
articles which suit their needs, it may be mentioned, on the authority
of a report from the British Consul-General to the British Foreign
Office on Trade and Finance in Korea for 1896, presented to Parliament
July, 1897, that the import of lucifer matches reached the figure of
£11,386,[49] while that of American and Russian kerosene exceeded
£36,000.

In 1896 the export of gold increased, and was $1,390,412, one million
dollars’ worth being exported from Wön-san alone. The gold export
included, the excess of Korean imports over exports was only about
£50,000, and as it is estimated that only one half of the gold actually
leaving the country is declared, it may be assumed that Korea is able
to pay for a larger supply of foreign goods than she has hitherto
taken. The statistics of Korean Foreign Trade which are to be found in
the Appendix are the latest returns, supplied to me by the courtesy
of the Korean Customs’ Department,[50] the returns of shipping and of
principal articles of export and import being taken from H.B.M.’s
Consul-General’s Report for 1896, presented to Parliament July,
1897.[51] With reference to the shipping returns, it must be observed
that the British flag is practically unrepresented in Korean waters,
even a chartered British steamer being rarely seen. The monopoly of the
carrying trade which Japan has enjoyed has only lately been broken into
by the establishment of a Russian subsidized line as a competitor.

In addition to the trade of the three ports open to Foreign Trade in
1896, to which the returns given refer exclusively, there is that
carried on by the non-treaty ports, and on the Chinese and Russian
frontiers.

In concluding this brief notice of the Foreign Trade of Korea, I may
remark that Japanese competition, so far as it consists in the ability
to undersell us owing to cheaper labor, is likely to diminish year by
year, as the conditions under which goods can be manufactured gradually
approximate to those which exist in England; the rapidly increasing
price of the necessaries of life in Japan, the demand for more than “a
living wage,” and an appreciation of the advantages of combination all
tending in this direction.

On the subject of Finance there is little to be said. The principal
items of revenue are a land tax of six dollars on a fertile _kyel_, and
five dollars on a mountain _kyel_, a house tax of 60 cents annually,
from which houses in the capital are exempt, the ginseng tax, and
the gold dues, making up a budget of about 4,000,000 dollars, a sum
amply sufficient for the legitimate expenditure of the country.
The land tax is extremely light. Only about a third of the revenue
actually collected reaches the National Treasury, partly owing to the
infinite corruption of the officials through whose hands it passes,
and partly because provincial income and expenditure are to a certain
extent left to local management. If the Government is in earnest in
the all-important matter of educating the people, the increased
expenditure can readily be met by imposing taxation on such articles of
luxury as wine and tobacco, which are enormously consumed, Seoul alone
possessing 475 wine shops and 1,100 tobacco shops. But even without
resorting to any new source of revenue, with strict supervision and
regular accounts the income of the Central Government is capable of
considerable expansion.

In spite of the awful official corruption which has been revealed,
and the chaos which up to 1896 prevailed in the Treasury, the
Korean financial outlook is a hopeful one. At the close of 1895 the
King persuaded Mr. M’Leavy Brown, LL.D., the Chief Commissioner of
Customs, to undertake the thankless office of Adviser to the Treasury,
confirming his position some months later by the issue of an edict
making his signature essential to all orders for payments out of the
national purse. Korean imagination and ingenuity are chiefly fertile
in devising tricks and devices for getting hold of public money, and
anything more hydra-headed than the dishonesty of Korean official life
cannot be found, so that it is not surprising that as soon as the
foreign adviser blocks one nefarious proceeding another is sprung upon
him, and that the army of useless drones, deprived of their “vested
interests” by the judicious retrenchments which have been made, as
well as thousands who are trembling for their ill-gotten gains, should
oppose financial reform by every device of Oriental ingenuity.

However, race, as represented by the honor and capacity of one
European, is carrying the day, and Korean Finance is gradually
being placed on a sound basis. With careful management, judicious
retrenchments of expenditure, the reduction of the chaos in the
Treasury to an orderly system of accounts, and a different method of
collecting the land tax, which is now being remitted with tolerable
regularity to the Treasury, an actual financial equilibrium was
established and maintained during the year 1896, which closed with a
considerable surplus, and in April, 1897, one million dollars of the
Japanese loan of three millions was repaid to Japan, and there is
every prospect that the remaining indebtedness might be paid off out
of income in 1899, leaving Korea in the proud position of a country
without a national debt, and with a surplus of income over expenditure!

The prosperous financial conclusion of 1896 is all the more remarkable
because of certain exceptional expenditures. Two new regiments were
added to the army, the old Arsenal, a disused costly toy, was put
into working order, with all necessary modern improvements, under the
supervision of a Russian machinist, the Kyeng-wun Palace was built,
costly ceremonies and works connected with the late Queen’s prospective
funeral were paid for, and a considerable area of western Seoul was
recreated. All civil Government _employés_ (and they are legion),
as well as soldiers and police, are paid regularly every month, and
sinecures are very slowly disappearing.

A Korean silver, copper, and brass coinage, convenient as well as
ornamental, is coming into general circulation, and as it gradually
displaces _cash_, is setting trade free from at least one of the
conditions which hampered it, and increased banking facilities are
tending in the same direction.


FOOTNOTES:

[48] For detailed statistics of Korean Foreign Trade, see Appendix C.

[49] This seems incredible, and compels one to suppose that £ is a
misprint for $.

[50] See Appendix B.

[51] See Appendix C.




CHAPTER XXXIV

DÆMONISM OR _SHAMANISM_


Korean cities without priests or temples; houses without “god shelves”;
village festivals without a _mikoshi_ or idols carried in festive
procession; marriage and burial without priestly blessing; an absence
of religious ceremonials and sacred books to which real or assumed
reverence is paid, and nothing to show that religion has any hold on
the popular mind, constitute a singular Korean characteristic.

Putting aside Buddhism with its gross superstitions, practised chiefly
in remote places, and the magisterial homage before the Confucian
tablets to the memory of the Great Teacher, the popular cult--I dare
not call it a religion--consists of a number of observances dictated by
the dread of bodiless beings created by Korean fancy, and representing
chiefly the mysterious forces of nature. It may be assumed, taking
tradition for a guide, as certain of the litanies used in exorcism and
invocation were introduced along with Buddhism from China, that Korean
imagination has grafted its own fancies on those which are of foreign
origin, and which are of by no means distant kinship to those of the
_Shamanism_ of northern Asia.

The external evidences of this cult are chiefly heaps of stones on the
tops of passes, rude shrines here and there containing tawdry pictures
of mythical beings, with the name in Chinese characters below, strings
from which depend small bags of rice, worn-out straw shoes, strips of
dirty rags, and, though rarely, rusty locks of black hair. Outside of
many villages are high posts (not to be confounded with the distance
posts) with their tops rudely carved into heads and faces half human,
half dæmonic, from which straw ropes, with dependent straw tassels,
recalling the Shintoism of Japan, are stretched across the road. There
are large or distorted trees also, on which rags, rice-bags, and old
shoes are hung, and under which are heaps of stones at which it is
usual for travellers to bow and expectorate. On the ridge poles of
royal buildings and city gates, there are rows of grotesque bronze
or china figures for the purpose of driving away evil dæmons, and at
crossroads a log of wood perforated like a mouse-trap, and with one
hole bunged up, over which travellers step carefully, may sometimes
be seen. In cities the beating of drums accompanied by the clashing
of cymbals vies with the laundry sticks in breaking the otherwise
profound stillness of night, and in travelling through the country, the
_mu-tang_ or sorceress is constantly to be seen going through various
musical and dancing performances in the midst of a crowd in front of a
house where there is sickness.

I have referred to these things in earlier chapters, but the subject
is such an important one, and the influence on Korean life of the
belief in dæmons is so strong and injurious, that I feel justified in
laying before my readers at some length such details of _Dæmonism_ as
have hitherto been ascertained. There is an unwillingness to speak to
foreigners on this topic, and inquirers may have been purposely misled,
but enough has been gained to make it likely that further inquiry will
be productive of very valuable results.[52] The superstitions already
mentioned, however trivial in themselves, point to that which underlies
all religion, the belief in something outside ourselves which is higher
or more powerful than ourselves.

It is indeed asserted by many of the so-called educated class that
the only cult in Korea is ancestor worship, and they profess to
ridicule the rags, cairns, shrines, and the other paraphernalia of
dæmon-worship, as the superstition of women and coolies, and it is
probable that in Seoul, at least, few men of the upper class are
believers, or patronize the rites otherwise than as unmeaning customs
which it would be impolitic to discontinue, but it is safe to say
that from the Palace to the hovel all women, and a majority of men,
go through the forms which, influencing Buddhism, and possibly being
modified by it, have existed in Korea for more than fifteen centuries.

Without claiming any degree of scientific accuracy for the term
_Shamanism_, as applied to this cult in Korea, it is more convenient
to use it, the word dæmon having come to bear a popular meaning which
prohibits its use where good spirits as well as bad are indicated.
So far as I know, _Shamanism_ exists only in Asia, and flourishes
specially among the tribes north of the Amur, the Samoyedes, Ostiaks,
etc., as well as among hill tribes on the southwestern frontier of
China. The term _Shaman_ may be applied to all persons, male or
female, whose profession it is to have direct dealings with dæmons,
and to possess the power of securing their good-will and averting
their malignant influences by various magical rites, charms, and
incantations, to cure diseases by exorcisms, to predict future events,
and to interpret dreams.

Korean _Shamanism_ or Dæmonism differs from that of northern Asia in
its mildness, possibly the result of early Buddhist influence. It
is the cult of dæmons not necessarily evil, but usually the enemies
of man, and addicted to revenge and caprice. Though the _Shamans_
are neither an order, nor linked by a common organization, they are
practically recognized as a priesthood, in so far as it is through
their offices that the dæmons are approached and propitiated on behalf
of the people. It is supposed that the _Shaman_ or wizard was one of
the figures in the dawn of Korean history, and that Dæmonism in its
early stage was marked by human sacrifices. _Shamans_ in the train of
royalty, and as a part of the social organization of the Peninsula,
figure in very early Korean story, and they appear to have been the
chief, if not the only, “religious” instructors.

One class among the _Shamans_ is incorporated into one of those guilds
which are the Trades Unions of Korea, and the Government has imposed
registration on another class.[53] There are now two principal classes
of _Shamans_, the _Pan-su_ and the _mu-tang_. The _Pan-su_ are blind
sorcerers, and those parents are fortunate who have a blind son, for he
is certain to be able to make a good living and support them in their
old age. The _Pan-su_ were formerly persons of much distinction in the
kingdom, but their social position has been lowered during the present
dynasty, though in the present reign their influence in the Palace,
and specially with the late Queen, has wrought much evil. The chief
officials of the _Pan-su_ Guild in Seoul hold the official titles of
_Cham-pan_[54] and _Seung-ji_ from the Government, which gives prestige
to the whole body. In order to guard their professional interests, the
_Pan-su_ have local guilds, and in the various sections “Clubhouses”
built out of their own funds. The central office of the _Pan-su_ guild
in Seoul was built and maintained by Government, and the two chief
officials of the guild hold, or held, _quasi_-official rank.

It appears that admission into the fraternity is only granted to an
applicant on his giving proof of proficiency in the knowledge of a
cumbrous body of orally transmitted _Shaman_ tradition, wisdom and
custom, much of it believed by the people to be 4,000 years old, and
embracing scraps of superstition from the darkest arcana of Buddhism,
as well as fragments of Confucianism. The neophyte has to learn of
“the existence, nature, and power of dæmons, their relations with man,
the efficacy of exorcism through a magic ritual, and the genuine and
certain character of the results of divination.” He must meditate on
“the customs, habits, and weaknesses of every class in Korean society
in order to deal knowingly with his clients. A slight acquaintance
with Confucianism must enable him to give a flavor of learning to
his speech, and he must be well drilled in the methods of exorcisms,
incantations, magic spells, divination, and the manufacture of charms
and amulets.”

The services of sorcerers or geomancers are invariably called for in
connection with the choice of sites for houses and graves, in certain
contracts, and on the occasion of unusual calamities, sickness,
births, marriages, and the purchase of land. The chief functions of
the _Shaman_ are, the influencing of dæmons by ritual and magical
rites, propitiating them by offerings, exorcisms, and the procuring of
oracles. In their methods, dancing, gesticulations, a real or feigned
ecstasy, and a drum play an important part. The fees of the _Shaman_
are high, and it is believed that at the lowest computation, Dæmonism
costs Korea two million five hundred thousand dollars annually! In
order to obtain favors or avert calamities, it is necessary to employ
the _Shamans_ as mediators, and it is their fees, and not the cost of
the offerings which press so heavily on the people.

Among the reasons which render the _Shaman_ a necessity are these. In
Korean belief, earth, air, and sea, are peopled by dæmons. They haunt
every umbrageous tree, shady ravine, crystal spring, and mountain
crest. On green hill slopes, in peaceful agricultural valleys, in
grassy dells, on wooded up-lands, by lake and stream, by road and
river, in north, south, east, and west they abound, making malignant
sport out of human destinies. They are on every roof, ceiling,
fireplace, _kang_ and beam. They fill the chimney, the shed, the
living room, the kitchen--they are on every shelf and jar. In thousands
they waylay the traveller as he leaves his home, beside him, behind
him, dancing in front of him, whirring over his head, crying out upon
him from earth, air, and water. They are numbered by _thousands of
billions_, and it has been well said that their ubiquity is an unholy
travesty of the Divine Omnipresence.[55] This belief, and it seems
to be the only one he has, keeps the Korean in a perpetual state of
nervous apprehension, it surrounds him with indefinite terrors, and it
may truly be said of him that he “passes the time of his sojourning
here in fear.” Every Korean home is subject to dæmons, here, there, and
everywhere. They touch the Korean at every point in life, making his
well-being depend on a continual series of acts of propitiation, and
they avenge every omission with merciless severity, keeping him under
this yoke of bondage from birth to death.

The phrase “dæmon-worship” as applied to Korean _Shamanism_ is
somewhat misleading. These legions of spirits which in Korean belief
peopled the world, are of two classes, the first alone answering to
our conception of dæmons. These are the self-existent spirits, unseen
enemies of man, whose designs are always malignant or malicious, and
spirits of departed persons, who, having died in poverty and manifold
distresses, are unclothed, hungry, and shivering vagrants, bringing
untold calamities on those who neglect to supply their wants. It is
true, however, that about 80 per cent. of the legions of spirits are
malignant. The second class consists also of self-existent spirits,
whose natures are partly kindly, and of departed spirits of prosperous
and good people, but even these are easily offended and act with
extraordinary capriciousness. These, however, by due intercessions and
offerings, may be induced to assist man in obtaining his desires, and
may aid him to escape from the afflictive power of the evil dæmons.
The comfort and prosperity of every individual depend on his ability to
win and keep the favor of the latter class.

Koreans attribute every ill by which they are afflicted to dæmoniacal
influence. Bad luck in any transaction, official malevolence, illness,
whether sudden or prolonged, pecuniary misfortune, and loss of power or
position are due to the malignity of dæmons. It is over such evils that
the _Pan-su_ is supposed to have power, and to be able to terminate
them by magical rites, he being possessed by a powerful dæmon, whose
strength he is able to wield.

As an example of the _modus operandi_, exorcism in sickness which is
believed to be the work of an unclean dæmon may be taken. The _Pan-su_
arrives at the house, and boldly undertakes the expulsion of the foul
spirit, the process being divided into four stages.[56]

1. By a few throws from the tortoise divining box, the sorcerer
discovers the dæmon’s nature and character, after which he seeks for an
auspicious hour and makes arrangements for the next stage.

2. Gaining control of the dæmon follows. The _Pan-su_ equips himself
with a wand of oak or pine a foot and half long, and a bystander is
asked to hold this in an upright position on an ironing stone. Magic
formulas are recited till the rod begins to shake and even dance on
the stone, this activity being believed to be the result of the dæmon
having entered the wand. At this stage a talk takes place to test the
accuracy of the divination of the dæmon’s name and nature, and of
the cause of the affliction. The _Pan-su_ manages the questions so
dexterously that a simple yes is indicated by motion in the wand, while
no is expressed by quiescence. At this stage the dæmon is given the
choice of quietly disappearing; after which, if he is obstinate, the
_Pan-su_ proceeds to dislodge him.

3. The third stage involves the aid of certain familiars of the
_Pan-su_. A special wand, made of an eastern branch of a peach tree,
which has much repute in expelling dæmons, is taken, and is held on
a table in a vertical position by an assistant. The _Pan-su_ recites
a farther part of his magic ritual, its power being shown by acute
movements in the wand in spite of attempts to keep it steady. A parley
takes place with the _Chang-gun_, the spirit who has been summoned
to find out his objects. He promises to catch the _Chang-kun_, the
malignant dæmon, and after preparations and offerings have been made
he is asked to search for him. The man who holds the wand is violently
dragged by a supernatural power out of the house to the place where the
_Chang-kun_ is. Then the _Chang-gun_ is supposed to seize him, and the
wand-holder is dragged back to the house.

4. A bottle with a wide mouth is put on the floor, and alongside it a
piece of paper inscribed with the name of the unclean daemon, which
has been obtained by divination and parley. The paper being touched
with the magic wand jumps into the bottle, which is hastily corked and
buried on the hillside or at the crossroads.

This singular form of exorcism has a long and unintelligible ritual, in
the cases of those who can afford to pay for it, occupying some days,
and at greater or lesser length is repeated daily by the _Shamans_
throughout Korea. It is usually succeeded by a form known as the Ritual
Pacification, which takes a whole night. This is for the purpose of
restoring order among the household dæmons, who have been much upset by
the previous proceedings, cleaning the house, and committing it and its
inmates to the protection of the most powerful members of the Korean
dæmoniacal hierarchy.

The instruments of exorcism used by the _Pan-su_ are offerings to be
made at various stages of the process, a drum, cymbals, a bell, a
divination box, and a wand or wands.

The _Shamans_ claim to have derived many of their very numerous
spells and formulas from Buddhists, who on their side assert that
dæmon-worship was practised in Korea long before the introduction of
Buddhism, and a relic of this worship is pointed out in the custom
which prevails in the Korean magistracies of offering to guardian
spirits on stone altars on the hills, pigs, or occasionally sheep,
before sowing time and after harvest, as well as in case of drought,
or other general calamity. This sacrifice is offered by the local
magistrate in the king’s name, and though identical in form with that
offered to _Hananim_ (the Lord of Heaven), is altogether distinct from
it. Most of the formulæ recited by the _Shamans_ have the reputation
of being unsafe for ordinary people to use, but in consideration
of the possibility of a great emergency, one is provided, which is
pronounced absolutely safe. This consists of fifty-six characters which
must be recited forwards, backwards, and sideways, and is called “The
twenty-eight stars formula.”[57]

Divination is the second function of the _Pan-su_, and consists in a
forecast of the future by means of rituals, known only to himself,
associated with the use of certain paraphernalia. This is used also
for finding out the result of a venture, or the cause of an existing
trouble, and for casting a man’s horoscope, _i.e._ “The four columns
of a man’s future,” these being the hour, day, month, and year of
his birth, or rather their four combinations. This horoscope is the
crowning function of divination. In these “four columns” the secret
of a man’s life is hidden, and their relations must govern him in
all his actions. When a horoscope contains an arrow, which denotes
ill-luck, the _Pan-su_ corrects the misfortune by formulæ used with a
bow of peach, with which during the recital he shoots arrows made of a
certain reed into a “non-prohibited” quarter. One of the great duties
of divination is to cast the horoscope of a bride and bridegroom for
an auspicious day for the wedding, for an unlucky one would introduce
dæmons to the ruin of the new household.

The great strongholds of divination are the “Frog-Boxes” and dice
boxes, manufactured for this purpose. The frog box is made like
a tortoise, having movable lips, and contains three _cash_, over
which the _Pan-su_ repeats a very ancient invocation, which has been
translated thus: “Will all you people grant to reveal the symbols.”
The coins are thrown three times, and the three falls present him
with the combinations of characters, out of which he manufactures his
oracle. The second implement of divination is a bamboo or brass tube
closed at both ends, but with a small hole in one to allow of the exit
of small bamboo splinters of which it contains eight. The same thing
is to be seen on innumerable altars in China. Each splinter has from
one to eight notches on it, and stands for a symbol of certain signs
on that divining table 3,000 years old, called the _Ho-pai_, which is
implicitly believed in by the Chinese. Two of these splinters give two
sets of characters, eight being connected with each symbol. When the
_Pan-su_ has obtained these he is ready to evolve his oracle.

Great reliance is placed on the charms which the _Pan-su_ make and
sell. Probably there are few adults or children who do not wear these
as amulets. They are generally made in the form of insects, or consist
of Chinese characters. They are written on specially prepared yellow
paper in red ink, and are regarded as being efficacious against illness
and other calamities. Amulets are made of the wood of trees struck by
lightning, which is supposed to possess magical qualities.


FOOTNOTES:

[52] I desire again to express my indebtedness to the Rev. G. Heber
Jones, of Chemulpo, for the loan of, and the liberty to use, his very
careful and painstaking notes on the subject of Korean dæmonism, and
also to a paper on _The Exorcism of Spirits in Korea_, by Dr. Landis
of Chemulpo. Apart from the researches of these two Korean scholars,
the results of my own inquiry and observation would scarcely have been
worth publishing.

[53] What is true in Korea to-day may be untrue to-morrow. One month
there was a police raid in Seoul upon the _mu-tang_ or sorceresses,
another the sisterhood was flourishing, and so the pendulum swings.

[54] _Cham-pan_ is a title of officials of a certain rank in Government
Departments in Seoul, and might be rendered Secretary of Department.
_Seung-ji_ probably has the same meaning.

[55] Rev. G. H. Jones.

[56] This detailed account is from notes kindly lent to me by the Rev.
G. H. Jones.

[57] The twenty-eight constellations, or stellar mansions, referred
to in the _Shu King_, one of the Chinese classical books, showing the
close connection between Chinese and Korean superstition.--W. C. H.




CHAPTER XXXV

NOTES ON DÆMONISM CONCLUDED


The second and larger division of the _Shamans_ consists of the
_mu-tang_. Though the _Pak-su Mu_, who are included among the
_mu-tang_, are men, the female idea prevails so largely that these wear
female clothing in performing their functions, and the whole class has
the name of _mu-tang_, and is spoken of as female.

The _mu-tang_ is universally prevalent, and her services are
constantly and everywhere sought. She enters upon an office regarded
as of high importance with very little ceremonial, requiring only a
little instruction from some one who has practised magic, and the
“supernatural call.” This call, of which much is made, consists in the
assurance of dæmoniacal possession, the dæmon being supposed to seize
upon the woman, and to become in fact her _doppelgänger_, so completely
is his personality superimposed on hers. The dæmon is almost invariably
a member of the Korean “_Dæmoneon_.” Mr. Jones mentions a woman who
claims that her indwelling dæmon is known as the spirit _Chil-song
Shin_, supposed to come from the constellation of _Ursa Major_, and he
brought with him a legion of other dæmons, from which the _mu-tang_
derive their honorific title, _Man-shin_, a Legion of Spirits. This
woman in her early married life was ill for three years, and had
frequent visions of the spirit, and heard but resisted the “call.” When
at last she yielded she was immediately cured, and was received into
favor with the spirit!

On obeying a dæmon call the woman snaps every tie of custom or
relationship, deserts parents, husband, or children, and obeys the
“call” alone. Her position from that hour is a peculiar one, for while
she is regarded as indispensable to the community she is socially an
outcast. In the curious relations of the Shamanate, the _Pan-su_ is
obviously the Master of the Dæmons, gaining power by cabalistic formulæ
or ritual to drive them off, or even bury them, while the _mu-tang_
supplicates and propitiates them. It is impossible to live in a place
which has not a _mu-tang Shaman_.

The functions of the _mu-tang_ are more varied than those of the
_Pan-su_, but on a par with his exorcisms may be placed her _Kauts_
or Pacifications and Propitiations of dæmons, which are divided
into the occasional and periodic, the latter being Dæmon Festivals,
one public the other private. The public one is a triennial _festa_
celebrated either by a large village or by an aggregation of hamlets,
and occupies three or four days. Its object is the tutelary dæmon of
the neighborhood, and its methods are sacrifice, petition, worship, and
thanksgiving. The villagers choose two of their number to take entire
charge of the festival, and by them a tax for expenses is levied on
the vicinity. They also choose the festival day, hire the _mu-tang_,
and arrange for the paraphernalia and the offerings to the dæmons. It
is essential that the festival day should be chosen by divination, by
either a _Sön-li_ or a _Pan-su_ acquainted with magic, and that the
sorcerers should bathe frequently and abstain from animal food for
seven previous days.

The village dæmon festival has a resemblance at some points to the
Shinto _matsuri_ of Japan. On the _festa_ day a booth, much decorated
with tags of brilliant color, is erected near the dæmons’ shrine,
and with an accompaniment of _mu-tang_ music, dancing, and lavish
and outlandish gesticulations, the offerings are presented to the
spirits. The popular belief is that the dæmons become incarnate in the
_mu-tang_, who utter oracles called _Kong-su Na-ta_, and the people
bring them bowls of uncooked rice, and plead for a revelation of their
future during the following three years. A common “test” at this
festival is the burning a tube of very thin white paper in a bowl.
Its upper end is lighted by the _mu-tang_, who recites her spells as
it burns. When it reaches the rim of the bowl, if the augury for the
future be unfavorable, the paper burns away in the bowl, if favorable,
the paper lifts itself and is blown away.

The private _festa_, the _Chöl-muri Kaut_, one of thanksgiving to the
household dæmons, is necessary to secure a continuance of their good
offices. The expenditure of the family resources on this occasion is so
lavish as frequently to impoverish the household for a whole year. This
_festa_ may be biennial or triennial. At the time a pig is sacrificed,
offerings are made, _mu-tang_ are hired, and the fetishes of the
dæmons are renewed or cleaned. The Ritual for these occasions, if
unabbreviated, lasts several days, but among the poor only a selection
from it is used. Its stages consist of rituals of invocation, petition,
offering, and purification. While these are being recited a household
spirit becomes incarnate in the _mu-tang_, and through her makes
oracular revelations of the future. At another stage deceased parents
and ancestors appear in the _mu-tang_, and her personation of them is
described by an eyewitness as both “pathetic and ludicrous.” At Seoul
this festival is observed by families at the dæmon shrines outside the
city walls, and not in private houses.

One of the very common occasions which requires the presence of
a _mu-tang_ is the ceremonial known as the Rite of Purification,
defilement being contracted by a birth or death or any action which
brings in an unclean dæmon, whose obnoxious entrance moves the guardian
or friendly dæmons to leave the house. A wand cut from a pine tree to
the _east_ of the house is used to bring about their return. It is
set working by the muttered utterance of special spells or formulæ by
the _mu-tang_, the _mont-gari_, or tutelary spirit is found, and by
means of prayers and offerings is induced to resume his place, and the
unclean dæmon is exorcised and expelled. The beating of a drum and the
frequent sprinkling of pure water are portions of this rite.

The utterance of oracles is another great function of the _mu-tang_.
In spite of the low opinion of women held by the Koreans, so strong
is the belief in the complete dæmoniacal possession of the _mu-tang_,
and their consequent elevation above their sex, that the Koreans refer
fully as much to them as to the _Pan-su_ for information regarding
the outcome of commercial ventures, and of projects of personal
advancement, as well as for the hidden causes of the loss of wealth
or position, or of adversity or illness. The _mu-tang_, by an appeal
to her familiar dæmon, in some cases obtains a direct answer, and in
others a reply by the divining chime, or the rice divination. The
latter consists of throwing down some grains of rice on a table and
noting the combinations which result. The “divining chime” is a hazel
wand with a circle of bells at one end. These are shaken violently by
the _mu-tang_, and in the din thus created she hears the utterance of
the dæmon.

The arranging for the sale of children to dæmons is a farther function
of the _mu-tang_, and is carried on to a very great extent. The Korean
father desires prosperity and long life for his boy (a girl being of
little account), and the sale of the child to a spirit is he believes
the best way of attaining his object. When the so-called sale has been
decided on, the father consults the sorceress as to when and where it
shall be made. The place chosen is usually a boulder near home, and
the child is there “consecrated” to the dæmon by the _mu-tang_ with
fitting rites. Thenceforward, on the 15th day of the 1st moon, and
the 3rd day of the 3rd moon, worship and sacrifice are offered to the
boulder. After this act of sale the name of the dæmon becomes part of
the boy’s name. It is not an unusual thing for the sale to be made to
the _mu-tang_ herself, who as the proxy of her dæmon accepts the child
in case she learns by a magic rite that she may do so. She takes in its
stead one of its rice bowls and a spoon, and these, together with
a piece of cotton cloth on which the facts concerning the sale of the
child are written, are laid up in her own house in the room devoted
to her dæmon. There is a famous _mu-tang_, whose house I have been in
just outside the south gate of Seoul, who has many of these, which
are placed on tables below the painted daubs of dæmons ordinarily,
but which, on great occasions, are used as banners. At the Periodic
Festivals offerings are made on behalf of these children, who, though
they live with their parents, know the sorceress or _mu-tang_ as
_Shin_, and are considered her children.

[Illustration: SOUTH GATE.]

The _mu-tang_ rites are specially linked with the house dæmon and with
_Mama_ the smallpox dæmon. The house dæmon is on the whole a good one,
being supposed to bring health and happiness, and if invited with due
ceremony he is willing to take up his abode under every roof. He cannot
always keep off disease, and in the case of contagious fevers, etc.,
he disappears until the rite of purification has been accomplished
and he has been asked to return. The ceremonies attending his recall
deserve notice. On this great occasion the _mu-tang_ in office ties a
large sheet of paper round a rod of oak, holds it upright, and goes
out to hunt him. She may find him near, as if waiting to be invited
back, or at a considerable distance, but in either case he makes his
presence known by shaking the rod so violently that several men cannot
hold it still, and then returns with the _mu-tang_ to the house, where
he is received with lively demonstrations of joy. The paper which was
round the stick is folded, a few _cash_ are put into it, it is soaked
in wine, and is then thrown up against a beam in the house to which it
sticks, and is followed by some rice which adheres to it. That special
spot is the abiding place of the dæmon. This ceremony involves a family
in very considerable expense.

The universal belief that illness is the work of dæmons renders the
services of a _Pan-su_ or _mu-tang_ necessary wherever it enters a
house, and in the case of smallpox, the universal scourge of Korean
childhood, the dæmon, instead of being exorcised, bottled, or buried,
is treated with the utmost respect. The name by which the disease is
called, “_Mama_,” is the dæmon’s name. It is said that he came from
South China, and has only infested Korea for 1,000 years. On the
disease appearing, the _mu-tang_ is called in to honor the arrival
of the spirit with a feast and fitting ceremonial. Little or no work
is done, and if there are neighbors whose children have not had the
malady, they rest likewise, lest, displeased with their want of
respect, he should deal hardly with them. The parents do obeisance
(worship) to the suffering child, and address it at all times in
honorific terms. Danger is supposed to be over after the 12th day,
when the _mu-tang_ is again summoned, and a farewell banquet is given.
A miniature wooden horse is prepared, and is loaded for the Spirit’s
journey with small bags of food and money, fervent and respectful
adieus are spoken, and he receives hearty good wishes for his
prosperous return to his own place!

In the course of many centuries the office of the _mu-tang_ has
undergone considerable modification. Formerly her power consisted
in the foretelling of events by the movements of a turtle on the
application of hot iron to his back, and by the falling of a leaf of
certain trees. Her present vocation is chiefly mediatorial. It is also
becoming partially hereditary, her daughter or even daughter-in-law
taking up her work. The “call” is considered a grave calamity.
Ordinarily these women are of the lower class. They are frequently
worshippers of Buddha, after the gross and debased cult which exists
in Korea, and place his picture along with those of the dæmons in the
small temples in their houses.

Taking the male and female Shamanate together, the _Shamans_ possess
immense power over the people, from the clever and ambitious Korean
queen, who resorted constantly to the _Pan-su_ on behalf of the future
of the Crown Prince, down to the humblest peasant family. They are
in intimate contact with the people in all times of difficulty and
affliction, their largest claims are conceded, and they are seldom out
of employment.

The dæmons whose professed servants the _Shamans_ are, and whose
yoke lies heavy on Korea, are rarely even mythical beings, who
might possibly have existed in human shape. They are legion. They
dwell in all matter and pervade all space. They are a horde without
organization, destitute of genus, species, and classification, created
out of Korean superstitions, debased Buddhism, and Chinese mythical
legend. There have been no native attempts at their arrangement, and
whatever has been done in this direction is due to the labors of Mr.
G. H. Jones and Dr. Landis, from whose lists a few may be chosen as
specimens.

The _O-bang-chang-kun_ are five, and some of the more important preside
over East Heaven, South, West, North, and Middle. In _Shaman’s_ houses
shrines are frequently erected to them, bearing their collective
name to which worship is paid. They are held in high honor and are
prominent in _Pan-su_ rites. At the entrance of many villages on the
south branch of the Han the villagers represent them by posts with tops
rudely carved into hideous caricatures of humanity, which are ofttimes
decorated with straw tassels, and receive offerings of rice and fruit
as village protectors.

The _Shin-chang_ are dæmon generals said to number 80,000, each one
at the head of a dæmon host. They fill the earth and air, and are
specially associated with the _Pan-su_, who are capable of summoning
them by magic formulæ to aid in divination and exorcism. Shrines to
single members of this militant host occur frequently in Central Korea,
each one containing a highly-colored daub of a gigantic mediæval
warrior, and the words, “I, the Spirit--dwell in this place.”

The Tok-gabi are the most dreaded and detested, as well as the best
known of all the dæmon _horde_. Yet they seem nondescripts, and careful
and patient examination has only succeeded in relegating them to the
class of such myths as the Will o’ the Wisp, and Jack o’ Lantern,
elevated, however, in Korea to the status of genuine devils with
fetishes of their own. They are regarded as having human originals in
the souls of those who have come to sudden or violent ends. They are
bred on execution grounds and battlefields, and wherever men perish in
numbers. They go in overwhelming legions, and not only dwell in empty
houses but in inhabited villages, terrifying the inhabitants. They it
was who, by taking possession of the fine Audience Hall of the Mulberry
Palace in Seoul, rendered the buildings untenable, frightful tales
being told and believed of nocturnal dæmon orgies amidst those doleful
splendors. People leave their houses and build new ones because of
them. Their fetishes may be such things as a _mapu’s_ hat or the cloak
of a _yamen_ clerk, rotten with age and dirt, enshrined under a small
straw booth. Besides the devilry attributed to the _Tok-gabi_ they are
accused of many pranks, such as placing the covers of iron pots inside
them, and pounding doors and windows all night, till it seems as if
they would be smashed, yet leaving no trace of their work.

The actually unclean spirits, the _Sagem_, the criminal class of the
vast “_Dæmoneon_,” infest Korean life like vermin, wandering about
embracing every opportunity of hurting and molesting man. Against these
both _Pan-su_ and _mu-tang_ wage continual war by their enchantments,
the _Pan-su_ by their exorcisms, either driving them off or catching
them and burying them in disgrace, while the _mu-tang_ propitiate them
and send them off in honor.

Another great group of dæmons is the _San-Shin Ryöng_--the spirits of
the mountains. I found their shrines in all the hilly country, along
both branches of the Han, by springs and streams, and specially under
the shade of big trees, and on _ampelopsis_ covered rocks, a flat rock
being a specially appropriate site from its suitability for an altar,
and thus specially “fortunate.” The dæmon who is the tutelary spirit of
_ginseng_, the most valuable export of Korea, is greatly honored. So
also is the patron dæmon of deer hunters, who is invariably represented
in his shrine as a fierce looking elderly man in official dress riding
a tiger. Surrounding him are altars to his harem, and there are also
female dæmons, mountain spirits, who are pictured as women, frequently
Japanese.

The tiger which abounds in Central and Northern Korea is understood
to be the confidential servant of these mountain dæmons, and when he
commits depredations, the people, believing the dæmon of the vicinity
to be angry, hurry with offerings to his nearest shrine. The Koreans
consider it a good omen when they see in their dreams the mountain
dæmon, either as represented in his shrine, or under the form of his
representative, the tiger. These mountain dæmons are specially sought
by recluses, and people ofttimes retire into solitary mountain glens,
where by bathing, fasting, and offerings they strive to gain their
favor. These spirits, believed to be very powerful, are much feared
by farmers, and by villagers living near high mountains. They think
that if when they are out on the hillsides cutting wood they forgot to
cast the first spoonful of rice from the bowl to the dæmon, they will
be punished by a severe fall or cut, or some other accident. These
spirits are capricious and exacting, and for every little neglect take
vengeance on the members of a farmer’s household or on his crops or
cattle.

The _Long-shin_, or Dragon dæmons, are water spirits. They have no
shrines, but the _Shamans_ conduct a somewhat expensive ceremony by the
sea and riversides in which they present them with offerings for the
repose of the souls of drowned persons.

The phase of Dæmonolatry which is the most common and the first to
arrest a traveller’s attention is also the most obscure. The _Söng
Whoang Dan_ (altar of the Holy Prince), the great Korean altar, rudely
built of loose stones under the shade of a tree, from the branches of
which are suspended such worthless _ex votos_ as strips of paper,
rags, small bags of rice, old clouts, and worn-out shoes, look less
like an altar than a decaying cairn of large size.[58] A peculiarity
of the _Söng Whoang Dan_ is that they are generally supposed to be
frequented by various dæmons, though occasionally they are crowned
by a shrine to a single spirit. Korean travellers make their special
plea to a travellers’ dæmon who is supposed to be found there, and
hang up strips of their goods in the overhanging branches, and the
sailor likewise regards the altar as the shrine of his guardian dæmon,
and bestows a bit of old rope upon it. Further than this, when some
special bird or beast has destroyed insects injurious to agriculture,
the people erect a shrine to it on these altars or cairns, on which may
frequently be seen the rude daub of a bird or animal.

Two spirits, the _To-ti-chi Shin_ and the _Chon-Shin_, are regarded
as local dæmons, and occupy spots on the mountain sides. They receive
worship at funerals, and a sacrifice similar to that offered in
ancestral worship is made to them before the body is laid in the earth.
Two _Shamans_ preside over this, and one of them intones a ritual
belonging to the occasion. The shrine of _Chon-Shin_ is a local temple,
a small decayed erection usually found outside villages. In Seoul he
has a mud or plaster shrine in which his picture is enshrined with much
ceremony, but in the country his fetish is usually a straw booth set up
over a pair of old shoes under a tree. For the observances connected
with him all the residents in a neighborhood are taxed. He may be
regarded as the chief dæmon in every district, and it is in his honor
that the _mu-tang_ celebrate the triennial festival formerly described.

The Household Spirits are the last division of the Korean _Dæmoneon_.
Söng Ju, the spirit of the ridge pole who presides over the home,
occupies a sort of imperial position with regard to the other household
spirits.

His fetish consists of some sheets of paper and a paper bag containing
as many spoonfuls of rice as the household is years old on the day when
the _mu-tang_ suspends it to the crossbeam of the house.

The ceremony of his inauguration was conducted as follows in the case
of a householder who was at once a scholar, a noble, a rich man, and
the headman of a large village. A lucky day having been chosen by
divination, the noble, after grading the site for his house, erected
the framework, and with great ceremony attached such a fetish,
duly prepared by the _Pan-su_, to the crossbeam. Prostrations and
invocations marked this stage. When the building of the house was
completed, an auspicious day was again chosen by divination, and a
great ceremony was performed by the _mu-tang_ for the enshrining of
the dæmon in the home. The _mu-tang_ arranged the ceremonial and
prepared the offerings, and then with a special wand only used on
these occasions, called the spirit who is supposed to be under her
control, and returning to the house solemnly enshrined him in the
fetish, to which it is correct to add a fresh sheet of paper every
year. After _Söng Ju_ was supposed to have had time to feed spiritually
on the offerings, they were placed before the guests, and a great
entertainment followed.

_Ti Ju_, or the lord of the site, is the next great dæmon, but
investigations regarding him have been very resultless. Little is
known, except that offerings are presented to him at some spot on the
premises, but not inside the house. These offerings, which are of food,
are made on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 15th of each month. This food is
afterwards eaten by the family, and a continual offering is represented
by a bit of cloth or a scrap of old rope. His fetish is a bundle of
straw, empty inside, placed on three sticks, but in some circumstances
a flower pot with some rice inside is substituted.

_Op Ju_, the kitchen dæmon, is the third of the trio which is
permanently attached to the house. His fetish is a piece of cloth or
paper nailed to the wall above the cooking place.

After these come the dæmons who are attached to the family and not
the house, the first of them being _Cho Wang_, a spirit of the
constellation of the Great Bear, a very popular spirit. His shrine is
outside the wall, and his fetish, to which worship is paid, is a gourd
full of cloth and paper. _Cho Wang_ is often the dæmon familiar of a
_mu-tang_.

_Ti Ju_, No. 2, is the fate or luck of the family, and every household
is ambitions to secure him. His fetish is a straw booth three feet
high, in which is a flower pot containing some rice covered with a
stone and paper.

The greatest of the family dæmons is an ancient and historical dæmon,
_Chöi Sok_, who is regarded as the grandfather of _San Chin-chöi Sök_,
the dæmon of nativity. His fetish, unless it becomes rotten or is
accidentally destroyed, descends from father to son. He has several
fetishes, and when he receives homage at the Triennial Festival, the
_mu-tang_ puts on the dress of an official. He is the dæmon of nativity
and the giver of posterity, and is a triple dæmon. Korean women hearing
of the Christian Trinity have been known to say that _San chin_ enables
them to understand the mystery! He is believed to have the control of
all children up to the age of four. He avenges ceremonial defilement
such as the sight by an expectant mother of a mourner or a dead object,
and outside a house where there has been a recent birth, a notice
warning visitors not to enter is often put up on his behalf. He imposes
on plebeian mothers a period of seclusion for twenty-one days after a
birth, but for noble mothers one hundred days, for which period the
rays of the sun are rigidly excluded from both mother and child.

_Pa-mul_, the dæmon of riches, is the Japanese _Daikoku_ and the
British _Mammon_. He is worshipped in the granary, and thanks are
offered to him as well as petitions. His fetish is a paste jar set up
on two decorated bags of rice. A man in Chemulpo, now a Christian,
had a very famous fetish, which was originally a jar of beans, but
these were changed into clear water, and a mysterious improvement in
the fortunes of the family set in from that date, the jar becoming an
object of grateful worship. One day it was found broken and the water
lost, and from that time his fortunes declined.

Kol-lip is the dæmon who takes charge of the external fortunes of the
family, and is also the mercury of the household dæmons. His fetish is
enshrined over the gate-house, and consists of a mass of rubbish, old
straw shoes for wearing on his travels, _cash_ for spiritual funds,
and a fragment of grass cloth for travelling outfit. There is also the
dæmon of the gate whose fetish hangs over the entrance.

Dr. Landis has classified the Korean dæmons as follows:--


_Spirits high in rank_

  1. Spirits of the Heavens.
  2. Spirits of the Earth.
  3. Spirits of the Mountains and Hills.
  4. Spirits of the Dragons.
  5. Guardian Spirits of the District.
  6. Spirits of the Buddhist Faith (?)


_Spirits of the House_

   7. Spirit of the ridge pole. This is the chief of all the spirits
        of the House.
   8. Spirit of goods and furniture.
   9. Spirit dæmon of the Yi family.
  10. Spirit of the kitchen.
  11. Attendant spirits of No. 9.
  12. Spirits which serve one’s ancestors.
  13. The Guards and servants of No. 9.
  14. The Spirits which aid jugglers.
  15. Spirits of goods and chattels, like No. 8, but inferior in rank.
  16. Spirits of smallpox.
  17. Spirits which take the forms of animals.
  18. Spirits which take possession of young girls and change them into
        exorcists.
  19. Spirits of the seven stars which form the Dipper.
  20. Spirits of the house site.


_Various kinds of Spirits_

 21. Spirits which make men brave.

 22. Spirits which reside in trees. Any gnarled shrub or malformed tree
 is supposed to be the residence of one of these spirits. Spirits which
 cause persons to meet either a violent death or to die young. Any one
 who has died before reaching a cycle (_i.e._ 60 years) is supposed
 to have died owing to the influence of one of these spirits. It is
 needless to say that they are all evil.

 23. Spirits which cause tigers to eat men.

 24. Spirits which cause men to die on the road.

 25. Spirits which roam about the house causing all sorts of calamities.

 26. Spirits which cause a man to die away from home.

 27. Spirits which cause men to die as substitutes for others.

 28. Spirits which cause men to die by strangulation.

 29. Spirits which cause men to die by drowning.

 30. Spirits which cause women to die in childbirth.

 31. Spirits which cause men to die by suicide.

 32. Spirits which cause men to die by fire.

 33. Spirits which cause men to die by being beaten.

 34. Spirits which cause men to die by falls.

 35. Spirits which cause men to die by pestilence.

 36. Spirits which cause men to die by cholera.

The belief in the efficacy of the performances of the _mu-tang_ is
enormous. In sickness the very poor half starve themselves and pawn
their clothing to pay for her exorcisms. Her power has been riveted
upon the country for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The order is
said to date back 4,000 years, to have been called in China, where it
was under official regulations, _mu-ham_. Five hundred years ago the
founder of the present dynasty prohibited _mu-tang_ from living within
the walls of Seoul--hence their houses and temples are found outside
the city walls.

Women are not _mu-tang_ by birth, but of late years it has become
customary for the girl children of a sorceress to go out with her and
learn her arts, which is tending to give the profession a hereditary
aspect. It is now recruited partly in this fashion, partly from among
hysterical girls, and partly for a livelihood, but outside of these
sources, a dæmon may take possession of any woman, wife, maid, or
widow, rich or poor, plebeian or patrician, and compel her to serve
him. At the beginning of the possession she becomes either slightly
or seriously ill, and her illness may last four weeks or three years,
during which time she dreams of a dragon, a rainbow, peach trees in
blossom, or of a man in armor who is suddenly metamorphosed into an
animal. Under the influence of these dreams she becomes like an insane
person, and when awake sees many curious things, and before long speaks
as an oracle of the spirits.

She then informs her family that messengers from Heaven, Earth, and
the Lightning have informed her that if she is not allowed to practise
exorcism, they or their domestic animals will die. Should they insist
on secluding her, her illness shortly terminates fatally. If a daughter
of a noble family becomes possessed, they probably make away with her,
in the idea that if madness takes this turn, the disgrace would be
indelible.

But things usually go smoothly, and on being allowed to have her own
way the first thing she does is to go into a vacant room and fill it
with flowers as an offering to the dæmons. Then she must obtain the
clothing and professional paraphernalia of a deceased _mu-tang_. The
clothing may be destroyed after the dæmon has taken full possession of
his new recruit, but the drums and other instruments must be retained.
After the possessions of the deceased _mu-tang_ have been bestowed on
the new one who claims them, she proceeds to exorcise such bad spirits
as may be infesting the donor’s house, so as to enable his family to
live in peace, after which she writes his name on a tablet, and placing
it in a small room invokes blessings on him for three years.

After this ceremonial has been observed the _mu-tang_, fully possessed
by a dæmon, begins to exercise her very important and lucrative
profession. Her equipment consists of a number of dresses, some of them
very costly, a drum shaped like an hour-glass, four feet in length,
copper cymbals, a copper rod, with tinklers suspended from it by copper
chains, strips of silk and paper banners which float round her as she
dances, fans, umbrellas, wands, images of men and animals, brass or
copper gongs, and a pair of telescope-shaped baskets for scratching,
chiefly used in cases of cholera, which disease is supposed to result
from rats climbing about in the human interior. The scratching sound
made by a peculiar use of these baskets, which resembles the noise made
by cats, is expected to scare and drive away these rodents.

The preliminaries of exorcism are that the _mu-tang_ must subject
herself to certain restraints varying from a month to three days,
during which time she must abstain from flesh and fish, and must
partially fast. Before an exorcism ashes are steeped in water and the
sorceress takes of this, and sprinkles it as she walks round the house,
afterwards taking pure water and going through the same ceremony.

The almost fabulous sums squeezed by the _mu-tang_ out of the people
of Seoul are given in a previous chapter. It will be observed that
in Korea sickness is always associated with dæmoniacal possession,
and that the services of the _Pan-su_, or _mu-tang_, are always
requisitioned. European medicine and surgery are the most successful
assailants of this barbarous and degrading system which holds the
whole nation, in many respects highly civilized, in bondage, and the
influence of both as practised in connection with “Medical Missions” is
tending increasingly in the direction of emancipation.

It would be impossible to say how far the _mu-tang_ is self-deceived.
In some of her dances, especially in one in which she exorcises “The
dæmon of the Yi family,” one of the most powerful and malignant of the
dæmon hierarchy, she works herself into such a delirious frenzy that
she falls down foaming at the mouth, and death is occasionally the
result of the frantic excitement.

The “Dæmon of the Yi Family” is invoked in every district once in
three years by the _mu-tang_ in a formula which has been translated
thus--“Oh Master and Mistress of our Kingdom, may you ever exist in
peace. Once in every three years we invoke you with music and dancing.
Oh make this house to be peaceful.” If this malignant spirit arrives
at a house he can only be appeased by the death of a man, an ox, or a
pig. Therefore when the _mu-tang_ becomes aware that he has come to a
house or neighborhood, a pig is at once killed, boiled, and offered
up entire--the exorcist takes two knives and dances a sword dance,
working herself into a “fine frenzy,” after which a box is made and a
Korean official hat and robes are placed within it, as well as a dress
suitable for a palace lady. The box is then placed on the top of the
family clothes chest, and sacrifices are frequently offered there. This
dæmon is regarded as the spirit of a rebellious Crown Prince, the sole
object of whose dæmon existence is to injure all with whom he can come
into contact.

A man sometimes marries a _mu-tang_, but he is invariably “a fellow of
the baser sort,” who desires to live in idleness on the earnings of his
wife. If, as is occasionally the case, the _mu-tang_ belongs to a noble
family, she is only allowed to exorcise spirits in her own house, and
when she dies she is buried in a hole in a mountain-side with the whole
paraphernalia of her profession. Some _mu-tang_ do not go abroad for
purposes of exorcism. These may be regarded as the aristocracy of their
profession, and many of them are of much repute and live in the suburbs
of Seoul. Those who desire their services send the necessary money and
offerings, and the _mu-tang_ exorcise the spirits in their own houses.

The use of straw, ropes, and of pieces of paper resembling the Shinto
_gohei_, during incantations, with a certain similarity between the
Shinto and the _Shaman_ ceremonies, might suggest a common origin, but
our knowledge of the Dæmonism of Korea is so completely in its infancy,
that any speculations as to its kinships can be of little value, and
it is only as a very slight contribution to the sum of knowledge of an
obscure but very interesting subject, that I venture to present these
chapters to my readers.

The Koreans, it must be remarked, have no single word for Dæmonism or
Shamanism. The only phrase in use to express their belief in dæmons who
require to be propitiated is, _Kursin wi han-nan Köt_ (the worship of
Spirits). _Pulto_ is Buddhism, _Yuto_ Confucianism, and _Sönto_ Taoism,
but the termination _To_, “doctrine,” has not yet been affixed to
Dæmonism.


FOOTNOTES:

[58] Mr. G. H. Jones suggests the idea that these uncouth heap of
stones were originally munitions of war over which tutelary dæmons were
supposed to brood, and thinks that the transition to an altar would be
a very natural one.




CHAPTER XXXVI

SEOUL IN 1897[59]


It was midnight when, by the glory of an October full moon, I arrived
from Chemulpo at the foot of the rugged slope crowned with the
irregular, lofty, battlemented city wall and picturesque double-roofed
gateway of the Gate of Staunch Loyalty which make the western entrance
to the Korean capital so unique and attractive. An arrangement had
been made for the opening of the gate, and after a long parley between
the faithful Im and the guard, the heavy iron-bolted door creaked
back before the united efforts of ten men, and I entered Seoul, then
under the authority of Ye Cha Yun, an energetic and enlightened
Governor, under whose auspices the western part of the city has lost
the refuse heaps and foulness, with their concomitant odors, which
were its chief characteristic. In the streets and lanes not a man,
dog, or cat stirred, and not a light glimmered from any casement; but
when I reached Chong-dong, the foreign quarter, I observed that the
lower extremity of every road leading in the direction of the Russian
Legation was irregularly guarded by several slouching Korean sentries,
gossiping in knots as they leaned on their rifles.

The grounds of my host’s house open on those of the King’s new palace,
and the King and Crown Prince, attended by large retinues, were
constantly carried through them on their way from their asylum in
the Russian Legation to perform the customary rites at the spirit
shrine, to which the fragmentary remains of the murdered Queen
had been removed, to wait until the geomancers could decide on an
“auspicious” site for her grave, the one which had been prepared for
her at an enormous expense some miles outside the city having just been
pronounced “unlucky.”

A few days after my arrival the King went to the Kyeng-wun Palace
to receive a Japanese prince, and courteously arranged to give me
an audience afterwards, to which I went, attended, as on the last
occasion, by the British Legation interpreter. The entrances were
guarded by a number of slouching sentries in Japanese uniforms. Their
hair, which had been cropped at the time of the abolition of the
“topknot,” had grown again, and hung in heavy shocks behind their ears,
giving them a semi-barbarous appearance. At the second gate I alighted,
no chair being permitted to enter, and walked to a very simple audience
hall, then used for the first time, about 20 feet by 12 feet, of white
wood, with lattice doors and windows, both covered with fine white
paper, and with fine white mats on the floor.

The King and Crown Prince, both of whom were in deep mourning, _i.e._
in pure white robes with sleeveless dresses of exquisitely fine buff
grass-cloth over them, and fine buff crinoline hats, stood together
at the upper end of the room, surrounded by eunuchs, court ladies,
including the reigning favorites, the ladies _Pak_ and _Om_, and Court
functionaries, all in mourning, the whole giving one an impression of
absolute spotlessness. The waists of the voluminous white skirts of the
ladies, which are a yard too long for them all round, were as high up
as it is possible to place them.

[Illustration: SEOUL AND PALACE ENCLOSURE.]

The King and Crown Prince bowed and smiled. I made the required three
curtseys to each, and the interpreter adopted the deportment required
by Court etiquette, crouching, looking down, and speaking in an
awe-struck whisper. I had not seen the King for two years, a period of
great anxiety and vicissitude to him, but he was not looking worn or
older, and when I congratulated him on his personal security and the
assumption of his regal functions he expressed himself cordially in
reply, with an air of genuine cheerfulness. In the brief conversation
which followed the Crown Prince took part, and showed a fair degree of
intelligence, as well as a much improved physique.

Later I had two informal audiences of the King in his house in the
centre of the mass of the new buildings of the Kyeng-wun Palace. It
is a detached Korean dwelling of the best Korean workmanship, with
a deep-eaved, tiled roof, the carved beams of which are elaborately
painted, and their terminals decorated with the five-petalled plum
blossom, the dynastic emblem. The house consists of a hall with a
_kang_ floor, divided into one large and two small rooms by sliding and
removable partitions of fretwork, filled in with fine tissue paper,
the windows which occupy the greater part of both sides being of the
same construction. The very small rooms at each end are indicated as
the sleeping apartments of the King and his son by pale blue silk
mattresses laid upon the fine white mats which cover the whole floor.
The only furniture was two ten-leaved white screens. The fastenings
of the windows and partitions are of very fine Korean brasswork.
Simplicity could not go further.

Opposite is the much-adorned spirit shrine of the late Queen, connected
with the house by a decorated gallery. The inner palace enclosure,
where these buildings are, is very small, and behind the King’s house
rises into a stone terrace. Numerous as is the King’s guard, it is
evident that he fears to rely upon it solely, for of two gates leading
from his house one opens into quarters occupied by Russian officers,
who arrived in Seoul in the autumn of 1890, at the King’s request, for
purposes of military organization; and the other into small barracks
occupied by the Russian drill instructors of the Korean army. Through
the former he could reach the grounds of the English Legation in one
minute, and after his former experiences possibilities of escape must
be his first consideration. The small buildings of this new palace
were already crowded like a rabbit warren, and when completed will
contain over 1,000 people, including the bodyguard, eunuchs, and Court
officials innumerable, writers, readers, palace ladies, palace women,
and an immense establishment of cooks, runners, servants, and all the
superabundant and useless _entourage_ of an Eastern Sovereign, to whom
crowds and movement represent power. This congeries of buildings was
carefully guarded, and even the Korean soldier who attended on me was
not allowed to pass the gate.

The King had given me permission to take his photograph for Queen
Victoria, and I was arranging the room for the purpose when the
interpreter shouted “His Majesty,” and almost before I could step
back and curtsey, the King and Crown Prince entered, followed by the
Officers of the Household and several of the Ministers, a _posse_ of
the newfangled police crowding the veranda outside. The Sovereign,
always courteous, asked if I would like to take one of the portraits
in his royal robes. The rich crimson brocade and the gold embroidered
plastrons on his breast and shoulders became him well, and his pose was
not deficient in dignity. He took some trouble to arrange the Crown
Prince to the best advantage but the result was unsuccessful. After the
operation was over he examined the different parts of the camera with
interest, and seemed specially cheerful.

At a farewell audience some weeks later the King reverted to the
subject of a British Minister, accredited solely to Korea; and the
interpreter added, as an aside, “His Majesty is very anxious about
this.” He hardly seemed to realize that even if a change in the
representation were contemplated, it could scarcely be carried out
while Sir Claude Macdonald, who is accredited to both Courts, remains
Minister at Peking.

[Illustration: THE KING OF KOREA.]

The King was for more than a year the guest of the Russian Legation, an
arrangement most distasteful to a large number of his subjects, who
naturally regarded it as a national humiliation that their Sovereign
should be under the protection of a foreign flag. Rumors of plots for
removing him to the Palace from which he escaped were rife, and there
were days on which he feared to visit the Queen’s tablet-house unless
Russian officers walked beside his chair.

Mr. Waeber, the Russian Minister, had then been in Korea twelve
years. He is an able and faithful servant of Russia. He was trusted
by the King and the whole foreign community, and up to the time of
the _Hegira_ had been a warm and judicious friend of the Koreans.
His guidance might have prevented the King from making infamous
appointments and arbitrary arrests, from causelessly removing officials
who were working well, and from such reckless extravagances as a
costly Embassy to the European Courts and a foolish increase of the
army and police force. But he remained passive, allowing the Koreans
to “stew in their own juice,” acting possibly under orders from home
to give Korea “rope enough to hang herself,” a proceeding which might
hereafter give Russia a legitimate excuse for interference. Apart
from such instructions, it must remain an inscrutable mystery why so
excellent a man and so capable a diplomatist when absolutely master of
the situation neglected to aid the Sovereign with his valuable advice,
a course which would have met with the cordial approval of all his
colleagues.

Be that as it may, the liberty which the King has enjoyed at the
Russian Legation and since has not been for the advantage of Korea, and
recent policy contrasts unfavorably with that pursued during the period
of Japanese ascendency, which, on the whole, was in the direction of
progress and righteousness.

Old abuses cropped up daily, Ministers and other favorites sold offices
unblushingly, and when specific charges were made against one of the
King’s chief favorites, the formal demand for his prosecution was met
by making him Vice-Minister of Education! The King, freed from the
control of the mutinous officers and usurping Cabinet of 8th October,
1895, from the Queen’s strong though often unscrupulous guidance, and
from Japanese ascendency, and finding himself personally safe, has
reverted to some of the worst traditions of his dynasty, and in spite
of certain checks his edicts are again law and his will absolute.
And it is a will at the mercy of any designing person who gets hold
of him and can work upon his fears and his desire for money--of the
ladies _Pak_ and _Om_, who assisted him in his flight, and of favorites
and sycophants low and many, who sell or bestow on members of their
families offices they have little difficulty in obtaining from his
pliable good nature. With an ample Civil List and large perquisites he
is the most impecunious person in his dominions, for in common with all
who occupy official positions in Korea he is surrounded by hosts of
grasping parasites and hangers-on, for ever clamoring “Give, Give.”

Men were thrown into prison without reason, some of the worst of the
_canaille_ were made Ministers of State, the murderer of _Kim Ok-yun_
was appointed Master of Ceremony, and a convicted criminal, a man whose
life has been one career of sordid crime, was made Minister of Justice.
Consequent upon the surreptitious sale of offices, the seizure of
revenue on its way to the Treasury, the appointment of men to office
for a few days, to give them “rank” and to enable them to quarter on
the public purse a host of impecunious relations and friends, and the
custom among high officials of resigning office on the occasion of
the smallest criticism, the administration is in a state of constant
chaos, and the ofttimes well-meaning but always vacillating Sovereign,
absolute without an idea of how to rule, the sport of favorites usually
unworthy, who work upon his amiability, the prey of greedy parasites,
and occasionally the tool of foreign adventurers, paralyzes all good
government by destroying the elements of permanence, and renders
economy and financial reform difficult and spasmodic by consenting to
schemes of reckless extravagance urged upon him by interested schemers.
Never has the King made such havoc of reigning as since he regained his
freedom under the roof of the Russian Embassy.

I regret to have to write anything to the King’s disadvantage.
Personally I have found him truly courteous and kind, as he is to all
foreigners. He has amiable characteristics, and I believe a certain
amount of patriotic feeling. But as he is an all-important element
of the present and future condition of Korea, it would be misleading
and dishonest to pass over without remark such characteristics of
his character and rule as are disastrous to Korea, bearing in mind
in extenuation of them that he is the product of five centuries of a
dynastic tradition which has practically taught that public business
and the interests of the country mean for the Sovereign simply getting
offices and pay for favorites, and that statesmanship consists in
playing off one Minister against another.

Novelties in the Seoul streets were the fine physique and long gray
uniforms of Colonel Putiata and his subordinates, three officers and
ten drill-instructors, who arrived to drill and discipline the Korean
army, the American military adviser having proved a failure, while the
troops drilled by the Japanese were mutinous and rapacious, and the
Japanese drill-instructors had retired with the rest of the _régime_.
This “Military Commission” was doing its work with characteristic
vigor and thoroughness, and the flat-faced, pleasant-looking,
non-commissioned officers, with their drilled slouch, serviceable
uniforms, and long boots were always an attraction to the crowd. A
novelty, too, was the sight of the Korean cadet _corps_ of thirty-seven
young men of good families and seven officers, marching twice daily
between the drill ground of the Korean troops close to the Kyeng-pok
Palace and their own barracks behind the Russian Legation, with drums
beating and colors flying. These young men, who are to receive a two
years’ military education from Russian officers, are under severe
discipline, and were greatly surprised to find that servants were a
prohibited luxury, and that their training involved the cleaning and
keeping bright of their own rifles and accoutrements, and hard work for
many hours of the day. The army now consists of 4,300 men in Seoul,
800 of whom are drilled as a bodyguard for the King, and 1,200 in the
provinces, in Japanese uniforms, and equipped (so far as they go) with
3,000 Berdan rifles presented by Russia to Korea. The drill and words
of command are Russian.

A standing army of 2,000 men would have been sufficient for all
purposes in Korea, and as far as her need goes an army of 6,000 is an
unblushing extravagance and a heavy drain on her resources. It is most
probable that a force drilled and armed by Russia, accustomed to obey
Russian orders and animated by an intense hereditary hatred of Japan,
would prove a valuable _corps d’armée_ to Russia in the event of war
with that ambitious and restless empire.

The old _kesu_ or _gens d’armes_ with their picturesque dresses and
long red plumes are now only to be seen, and that rarely, in attendance
on officials of the Korean Government. Seoul is now policed, much
overpoliced, for it has a force of 1,200 men, when a quarter of that
number would be sufficient for its orderly population. Everywhere
numbers of slouching men on and off duty, in Japanese semi-military
uniforms, with shocks of hair behind their ears and swords in
nickel-plated scabbards by their sides, suggest useless and extravagant
expenditure. The soldiers and police, by an unwise arrangement made
by the Japanese, and now scarcely possible to alter, are enormously
overpaid, the soldiers receiving five dollars and a half a month, “all
found,” and the police from eight to ten, only finding their food. The
Korean army is about the most highly paid in the world. The average
Korean in his great baggy trousers, high, perishable, broad-brimmed
hat, capacious sleeves, and long flapping white coat, is usually a
docile and harmless man; but European clothes and arms transform him
into a truculent, insubordinate, and ofttimes brutal person, without
civic sympathies or patriotism, greedy of power and spoil. Detachments
of soldiers scattered through the country were a terror to the people
from their brutality and marauding propensities early in 1897, and
unless Russian officers are more successful than their predecessors
in disciplining the raw material, an overpaid army, too large for
the requirements of the country, may prove a source of weakness and
frequent disorder.

[Illustration: KOREAN CADET CORPS AND RUSSIAN DRILL INSTRUCTORS.]

Seoul in many parts, specially in the direction of the south and west
gates, was literally not recognizable. Streets, with a minimum width of
55 feet, with deep stone-lined channels on both sides, bridged by stone
slabs, had replaced the foul alleys, which were breeding-grounds of
cholera. Narrow lanes had been widened, slimy runlets had been paved,
roadways were no longer “free coups” for refuse, bicyclists “scorched”
along broad, level streets, “express wagons” were looming in the near
future, preparations were being made for the building of a French
hotel in a fine situation, shops with glass fronts had been erected in
numbers, an order forbidding the throwing of refuse into the streets
was enforced,--refuse matter is now removed from the city by official
scavengers, and Seoul, from having been the foulest is now on its way
to being the cleanest city of the Far East!

This extraordinary metamorphosis was the work of four months, and is
due to the energy and capacity of the Chief Commissioner of Customs,
ably seconded by the capable and intelligent Governor of the city,
Ye Cha Yun, who had acquainted himself with the working of municipal
affairs in Washington, and who with a rare modesty refused to take any
credit to himself for the city improvements, saying that it was all due
to Mr. M’Leavy Brown.

Old Seoul, with its festering alleys, its winter accumulations of every
species of filth, its ankle-deep mud and its foulness, which lacked,
the redeeming element of picturesqueness, is being fast improved off
the face of the earth. Yet it is chiefly a restoration, for the dark,
narrow alleys which lingered on till the autumn of 1896 were but the
result of gradual encroachments on broad roadways, the remains of the
marginal channels of which were discovered.

What was done (and is being done) was to pull down the houses,
compensate their owners, restore the old channels, and insist that the
houses should be rebuilt at a uniform distance behind them. Along the
fine broad streets thus restored tiled roofs have largely replaced
thatch, in many cases the lower parts of the walls have been rebuilt
of stone instead of wattle, and attempts at decoration and neatness
are apparent in many of the house and shop fronts, while many of the
smoke-holes, which vomit forth the smoke of the _kang_ fires directly
into the street, are now fitted with glittering chimneys, constructed
out of American kerosene tins.

Some miles of broad streets are now available as promenades, and
are largely taken advantage of; business looked much brisker than
formerly, the shops made more display, and there was an air of greater
prosperity, which has been taken advantage of by the Hong-Kong and
Shanghai Bank, which has opened a branch at Chemulpo, and will probably
erelong appear in the capital.

It is not, however, only in the making of broad thoroughfares that the
improvement consists. Very many of the narrow lanes have been widened,
their roadways curved and gravelled, and stone gutters have been built
along the sides, in some cases by the people themselves. Along with
much else the pungent, peculiar odor of Seoul has vanished. Sanitary
regulations are enforced, and civilization has reached such a height
that the removal of the snow from the front of the houses is compulsory
on all householders. So great is the change that I searched in vain for
any remaining representative slum which I might photograph for this
chapter as an illustration of Seoul in 1894. It must be remarked,
however, that the capital is being reconstructed on Korean lines, and
is not being Europeanized.

[Illustration: SOUTH STREET, SEOUL.]

Chong-dong, however, the quarter devoted to Foreign Legations,
Consulates, and Mission agencies, would have nearly ceased to be
Korean had not the King set down the Kyeng-won Palace with its crowded
outbuildings in the midst of the foreign residences. Most of the
native inhabitants have been bought out. Wide roads with foreign shops
have been constructed. The French have built a Legation on a height,
which vies in grandeur with that of Russia, and the American Methodist
Episcopal Mission has finished a large red brick church, which, like
the Roman Cathedral, can be seen from all quarters.

The picturesque Peking Pass, up and down whose narrow, rugged pathway
generations of burdened baggage animals toiled and suffered, and which
had seen the splendors of successive Chinese Imperial Envoys at the
accession of the Korean Kings, has lost its identity. Its rock ledges,
holes, and boulders have disappeared--the rocky gash has been widened,
and the sides chiselled into smoothness, and under the auspices of the
Russian Minister a broad road, with retaining walls and fine culverts,
now carries the traffic over the lowered height.

Many other changes were noticeable. The Tai-won Kun, for so many
years one of the chief figures in Korean politics, was practically a
prisoner in his own palace. The Eastern and Western Palaces, with their
enormous accommodation and immense pleasure-grounds, were deserted,
and were already beginning to decay. The Japanese soldiers had vacated
the barracks so long occupied by them close to the Kyeng-pok Palace,
and, reduced to the modest numbers of a Legation guard, were quartered
in the Japanese settlement; parties of missionaries who had hived off
from Chong-dong were occupying groups of houses in various parts of the
capital, and there was a singular “boom” in schools, accompanied by a
military craze, which affected not the scholars only, but the boys of
Seoul generally.

But it must be remarked in connection with education in Korea that so
lately as the close of 1896 a book, called _Confucianist Scholars’
Handbook of the Latitudes and Longitudes_, had been edited by Sin
Ki Sun, Minister of Education, prefaced by two Councillors of the
Education Department, and published at Government expense, in which the
following sentences occur:--

P. 52: “Europe is too far away from the centre of civilization, _i.e._
the Middle Kingdom; hence Russians, Turks, English, French, Germans,
and Belgians look more like birds and beasts than men, and their
languages sound like the chirping of fowls.”

Again: “According to the views of recent generations, what westerners
call the Christian Religion is vulgar, shallow, and erroneous, and is
an instance of the vileness of Barbarian customs, which are not worthy
of serious discussion.... They worship the heavenly spirits, but do not
sacrifice to parents, they insult heaven in every way, and overturn the
social relations. This is truly a type of Barbarian vileness, and is
not worthy of treatment in our review of foreign customs, especially as
at this time the religion is somewhat on the wane.

“Europeans have planted their spawn in every country of the globe
except China. All of them honor this religion (!), but we are surprised
to find that the Chinese scholars and people have not escaped
contamination by it.”

On p. 42 it is said: “Of late the so-called _Ye Su Kyo_ (Christianity)
has been trying to contaminate the world with its barbarous teachings.
It deceives the masses by its stories of Heaven and Hell: it interferes
with the rites of ancestral worship, and interdicts the custom of
bowing before the gods of Heaven and Earth. These are the ravings of a
disordered intellect, and are not worth discussing.”

P. 50: “How grand and glorious is the Empire of China, the Middle
Kingdom! She is the largest and richest in the world. The grandest men
of the world have all come from the Middle Empire.”

This tirade from an official pen was thought worthy of a remonstrance
from the foreign representatives.

The graceful _Pai-low_, near the Peking Pass, at which generations of
Korean kings had publicly acknowledged Chinese suzerainty by awaiting
there the Imperial Envoy who came to invest them with regal rights, was
removed, and during my sojourn the foundation of an arch to commemorate
the assumption of Independence by Korea in January, 1895, was laid near
the same spot, in presence of a vast concourse of white-robed men. An
Independence Club, with a disused Royal Pavilion near the stumps of the
_Pai-low_ for its Club House, had been established to commemorate and
conserve the national autonomy, and though the entrance fee is high,
had already a membership of 2,000.

After a number of patriotic speeches had been made on the occasion
of the laying of the foundation of the independence arch, the Club
entertained the Foreign Legations and all the foreign residents at
a _récherché_ “collation” in this building; speeches were made both
by Koreans and the Foreign Representatives, and an extraordinary
innovation was introduced. Waiters were dispensed with, and the
Committee of the Club, the Governor of Seoul, and several of the
Ministers of State themselves attended upon the guests with much grace
and courtesy.

One of the most important events in Seoul was the establishment in
April, 1896, by Dr. Jaisohn of the _Independent_, a two-page tri-weekly
newspaper in English and the Korean script, enlarged early in 1897
to four pages, and published separately in each language. Only those
who have formed some idea of the besotted ignorance of the Korean
concerning current events in his own country, and of the credulity
which makes him the victim of every rumor set afloat in the capital,
can appreciate the significance of this step and its probable effect
in enlightening the people, and in creating a public opinion which
shall sit in judgment on regal and official misdeeds. It is already
fulfilling an important function in unearthing abuses and dragging them
into daylight, and is creating a desire for rational education and
reasonable reform, and is becoming something of a terror to evil-doers.
Dr. Jaisohn (So Chia P’il) is a Korean gentleman educated in America,
and has the welfare of his country thoroughly at heart.

The sight of newsboys passing through the streets with bundles of a
newspaper in _En-mum_ under their arms, and of men reading them in
their shops, is among the novelties of 1897. Besides the _Independent_,
there are now in Seoul two weeklies in _En-mun_ the _Korean Christian
Advocate_, and the _Christian News_; and the Korean Independence Club
publishes a monthly magazine, _The Chosen_, dealing with politics,
science, and foreign news, which has 2,000 subscribers. Seoul has also
a paper, the _Kanjo Shimbo_, or _Seoul News_, in mixed Japanese and
Korean script, published on alternate days, and there are newspapers in
the Japanese language, both in Fusan and Chemulpo. All these, and the
admirable _Korean Repository_, are the growth of the last three years.

The faculty of combination, by which in Korea as in China the weak
find some measure of protection against the strong, is being turned
to useful account. This _Kyei_, or principle of association, which
represents one of the most noteworthy features of Korea, develops
into insurance companies, mutual benefit associations, money-lending
syndicates, tontines, marriage and burial clubs, great trading guilds,
and many others.

With its innumerable associations, only a few of which I have alluded
to, Korean life is singularly complex; and the Korean business world
is far more fully organized than ours, nearly all the traders in the
country being members of guilds, powerfully bound together, and having
the common feature of mutual helpfulness in time of need. This habit
of united action, and the measure of honesty which is essential to the
success of combined undertakings, supply the framework on which various
joint-stock companies are being erected, among which one of the most
important is a tannery. Korean hides have hitherto been sent to Japan
to be manufactured, owing to caste and superstitious prejudices against
working in leather. The establishment of this company, which brought
over Japanese instructors to teach the methods of manufacture, has not
only made an end of a foolish prejudice, in the capital at least, but
is opening a very lucrative industry, and others are following.

As may be expected in an Oriental country, the administration of law
in Korea is on the whole infamous. It may be said that a body of law
has yet to be created, as well as the judges who shall administer it
equably. A mixed Committee of Revision has been appointed, but the
Korean members show a marked tendency to drop off, and no legal reform,
solely the work of foreigners, would carry weight with the people. Mr.
Greathouse, a capable lawyer and legal adviser to the Law Department,
has been able to prevent some infamous transactions, but on the whole
the Seoul Law Court does little more than administer injustice and
receive bribes. Of the two Law Courts of the capital the Supreme Court,
under the supervision of the Minister and Vice-Minister of Justice,
and in which the foreign adviser sits with the judges to advise in
important cases, is the most hopeful; yet one of the most disgraceful
of late appointments has been in connection with this department. The
outrageous decisions, the gross bribery, and the actual atrocities of
the Seoul Court are likely to bring about its abolition, and I will not
enlarge upon them.

One of the most striking changes introduced into the Seoul of 1897 is
the improvement in the prison, which is greatly owing to Mr. A. B.
Stripling, formerly of the Shanghai Police, who, occupying a position
as adviser to the Police Department, is carrying out prison reforms,
originally suggested by the Japanese, in a humane and enlightened
manner. Torture has disappeared from the great city prison, but there
were dark rumors that some of the political prisoners, so lately as
January, 1897, were subjected to it elsewhere.

My experience of Eastern prisons, chiefly in Asia Minor, China,
Persia, and a glimpse of a former prison in Seoul, have given me a
vivid impression of the contrast presented by the present system.
Surrounding a large quadrangle, with the chief jailer’s house in the
centre, the rooms, not to be called cells, are large, airy, light, and
well-ventilated, with boarded floors covered with mats, and plenty of
air space below. It is true that on the day I visited them some of the
prisoners were shivering, and shivered more vigorously as an appeal
to my compassion, but then the mercury was at 18° F., and this is not
a usual temperature. They have a large bathroom with a stove on the
Japanese plan. Their diet consists of a pint of excellent soup twice
a day, with a large bowl of rice, and those who go out to work get a
third meal. This ample diet cost 1¹⁄₄d. per day.

There were from twelve to eighteen prisoners in each ordinary room, and
fifty were awaiting trial in one roomy hall. A few under sentence, two
of them to death, wore long wooden _cangues_, but I did not see any
fetters. They are allowed to bring in their own mattresses, mats, and
pillows for extra comfort. On the whole they were clean, cleaner than
the ordinary coolies outside. A perforated wooden bar attached to the
floor, with another with corresponding perforations above it, secures
the legs of the prisoners at night. The sick were lying thickly on the
hot floor of a room very imperfectly lighted, but probably the well
would have been glad to change with them.

There were 225 prisoners altogether, all men. Classification is still
in the future. Murderers and pilferers occupied the same room, and
colonels of regiments accused of a serious conspiracy were with
convicted felons, who might or might not be acting as spies and
informers; a very fine-looking man, sentenced for life, the first
magistrate in Korea ever convicted and punished for bribery, and that
on the complaint of a simple citizen, was in a “cell” with criminals
wearing _cangues_. Some of the sentences seemed out of proportion
to the offences, as, for instance, a feeble old man was immured for
three years for cutting and carrying off pine brush for fuel, and an
old blind man of some position was incarcerated for ten years for the
violation of a grave under circumstances of provocation.

Much has been done in the way of prison reform, and much remains to
be done, specially in the direction of classification, but still the
great Seoul prison contrasts most favorably with the prisons of China
and other unreformed Oriental countries. Torture is at least nominally
abolished, and brutal exposures of severed heads and headless trunks,
and beating and slicing to death, were made an end of during the
ascendency of Japan. After an afternoon in the prison of Seoul, I
could hardly believe it possible that only two years before I had seen
several human heads hanging from tripod stands and lying on the ground
in the throng of a business street, and headless bodies lying in their
blood on the road outside the East Gate.

To mention the changes in Seoul would take another chapter. Dr. Allen,
now U.S. Minister to Korea, said that the last four months of 1896 had
seen more alterations than the previous twelve years of his residence
in the country, and the three months of my last visit brought something
new every week.

As a foil to so much that is indicative of progress, I conclude this
chapter by mentioning, on the authority of the Governor of Seoul, that
in January, 1897, there were in the capital a thousand _mu-tang_,
or sorceresses, earning on an average fifteen dollars a month each,
representing an annual expenditure by that single city of a hundred and
eighty thousand dollars on dealings with the spirits, exclusive of the
large sums paid to the blind sorcerers for their services, and to the
geomancers, whose claims on the occasion of the interment of any one of
rank and wealth are simply monstrous.

[Illustration: KOREAN POLICEMEN

  Old _Régime_      New _Régime_]


FOOTNOTES:

[59] I left Korea for China at Christmas, 1895, and after spending six
months in travelling in the Chinese Far West, and three months among
the Nan-tai San mountains in Japan, returned in the middle of October,
1896, and remained in Seoul until late in the winter of 1896-97.




CHAPTER XXXVII

LAST WORDS ON KOREA


The patient reader has now learned with me something of Korean history
during the last three years, as well as of the reorganized methods
of Government, and the education, trade, and finance of the country.
He has also by proxy travelled in the interior, and has lived among
the peasant farmers, seeing their industries, the huckstering which
passes for trade, something of their domestic life and habits, and
the superstitions by which they are enslaved, and has acquired some
knowledge of the official and patrician exactions under which they
suffer. He has seen the Koreans at home, with their limpness, laziness,
dependence, and poverty, and Koreans under Russian rule raised into
a thrifty and prosperous population. He can to some extent judge for
himself of the prospects of a country which is incapable of standing
alone, and which could support double its present population, and of
the value of a territory which is possibly coveted by two Powers.
Having acted as his guide so far, I should like to conclude with a few
words on some of the subjects which have been glanced at in the course
of these volumes.

Korea is not _necessarily_ a poor country. Her resources are
undeveloped, not exhausted. Her capacities for successful agriculture
are scarcely exploited. Her climate is superb, her rainfall abundant,
and her soil productive. Her hills and valleys contain coal, iron,
copper, lead, and gold. The fisheries along her coast-line of 1,740
miles might be a source of untold wealth. She is inhabited by a hardy
and hospitable race, and she has no beggar class.

On the other hand, the energies of her people lie dormant. The
upper classes, paralyzed by the most absurd of social obligations,
spend their lives in inactivity. To the middle class no careers are
open; there are no skilled occupations to which they can turn their
energies. The lower classes work no harder than is necessary to keep
the wolf from the door, for very sufficient reasons. Even in Seoul,
the largest mercantile establishments have hardly risen to the level
of shops. Everything in Korea has been on a low, poor, mean level.
Class privileges, class and official exactions, a total absence of
justice, the insecurity of all earnings, a Government which has carried
out the worst traditions on which all unreformed Oriental Governments
are based, a class of official robbers steeped in intrigue, a monarch
enfeebled by the seclusion of the palace and the pettinesses of the
Seraglio, a close alliance with one of the most corrupt of empires, the
mutual jealousies of interested foreigners, and an all-pervading and
terrorizing superstition have done their best to reduce Korea to that
condition of resourcelessness and dreary squalor in which I formed my
first impression of her.

Nevertheless the resources are there, in her seas, her soil, and her
hardy population.

A great and universal curse in Korea is the habit in which thousands
of able-bodied men indulge of hanging, or “sorning,” on relations or
friends who are better off than themselves. There is no shame in the
transaction, and there is no public opinion to condemn it. A man who
has a certain income, however small, has to support many of his own
kindred, his wife’s relations, many of his own friends, and the friends
of his relatives. This partly explains the rush for Government offices,
and their position as marketable commodities. To a man burdened with a
horde of hangers-on, the one avenue of escape is official life, which,
whether high or low, enables him to provide for them out of the public
purse. This accounts for the continual creation of offices, with no
other real object than the pensioning of the relatives and friends of
the men who rule the country. Above all, this explains the frequency
of conspiracies and small revolutions in Korea. Principle is rarely at
stake, and no Korean revolutionist intends to risk his life in support
of any conviction.

Hundreds of men, strong in health and of average intelligence, are at
this moment hanging on for everything, even their tobacco, to high
officials in Seoul, eating three meals a day, gossiping and plotting
misdeeds, the feeling of honorable independence being unknown. When
it is desirable to get rid of them, or it is impossible to keep them
longer, offices are created or obtained for them. Hence Government
employment is scarcely better than a “free coup” for this class of
rubbish. The factious political disturbances which have disgraced Korea
for many years have not been conflicts of principle at all, but fights
for the Government position which gives its holder the disposal of
offices and money. The suspiciousness which prevents high officials
from working together is also partly due to the desire of every
Minister to get more influence with the King than his colleagues, and
so secure more appointments for his relations and friends. The author
of the Korean Dictionary states that the word for _work_ in Korean is
synonymous with “loss,” “evil,” “misfortune,” and the man who leads an
idle life proves his right to a place among the gentry. The strongest
claim for office which an official puts forward for a _protégé_ is that
he cannot make a living. Such persons when appointed do little, and
often nothing, except draw their salaries and “squeeze” where they can!

I have repeated almost _ad nauseam_ that the cultivator of the soil is
the _ultimate sponge_. The farmers work harder than any other class,
and could easily double the production of the land, their methods,
though somewhat primitive, being fairly well adapted to the soil and
climate. But having no security for their gains, they are content to
produce only what will feed and clothe their families, and are afraid
to build better houses or to dress respectably. There are innumerable
peasant farmers who have gone on reducing their acreage of culture year
by year, owing to the exactions and forced loans of magistrates and
_yang-bans_, and who now only raise what will enable them to procure
three meals a day. It is not wonderful that classes whose manifest
destiny is to be squeezed, should have sunk down to a dead level of
indifference, inertia, apathy, and listlessness.

In spite of reforms, the Korean nation still consists of but two
classes, the Robbers and the Robbed,--the official class recruited from
the _yang-bans_, the licensed vampires of the country, and the _Ha-in_,
literally “low men,” a residuum of fully four-fifths of the population,
whose _raison d’être_ is to supply the blood for the vampires to suck.

Out of such unpromising materials the new nation has to be constructed,
by education, by protecting the producing classes, by punishing
dishonest officials, and by the imposition of a labor test in all
Government offices, _i.e._ by paying only for work actually done.

That reforms are not hopeless, if carried out under firm and capable
foreign supervision, is shown by what has been accomplished in the
Treasury Department in one year. No Korean office was in a more chaotic
and corrupt condition, and the ramifications of its corruption were
spread all through the Provinces. Much was hoped when Mr. M’Leavy Brown
accepted the thankless position of Financial Adviser, from his known
force of character and remarkable financial capacity, but no one would
have ventured to predict what has actually occurred.

Although his efforts at financial reform have been thwarted at
every turn, not alone by the rapacity of the King’s male and female
favorites, and the measureless cunning and craft of corrupt officials,
who incite the Sovereign to actions concerning money which are
subversive of the fairest schemes of financial rectitude, but by
chicane, fraud, and corruption in every department; by the absence of
trustworthy subordinates; by infamous traditional customs; and the fact
that every man in office, and every man hoping for office, is pledged
by his personal interest to oppose every effort at reform actively or
passively, Korean finance stands thus at the close of 1897.

In a few months the Augean stable of the Treasury Department in Seoul
has been cleansed; the accounts are kept on a uniform system, and with
the utmost exactitude; “value received” precedes payments for work; an
army of drones, hanging on to all departments and subsisting on public
money, has been disbanded; a partial estimate has been formed of the
revenue which the Provinces ought to produce; superfluous officials
unworthily appointed find that their salaries are not forthcoming;
every man entitled to receive payment is paid at the end of every
month; nothing is in arrears; great public improvements are carried out
with a careful supervision which ensures rigid economy; the accounts
of every Department undergo strict scrutiny; no detail is thought
unworthy of attention, and instead of Korea being bankrupt, as both her
friends and enemies supposed she would be in July, 1896, she closed the
financial year in April, 1897, with every account paid and a million
and a half in the Treasury, out of which she has repaid one million of
the Japanese loan of three millions. If foreign advisers of similar
calibre and capacity were attached to all the departments of State
similar results might in time be obtained.

One thing is certain, that the war and the period of the energetic
ascendency of Japan have given Korea so rude a shake, and have so
thoroughly discredited various customs and institutions previously
venerated for their antiquity, that no retrograde movements, such as
have been to some extent in progress in 1897, can replace her in the
old grooves.

Seoul is Korea for most practical purposes, and the working of the
Western leaven, the new impulses and modes of thought introduced
by Western education, the inevitable contact with foreigners, and
the influence of a free Press are through Seoul slowly affecting the
nation. Under the shadow of Chinese suzerainty the Korean _yang-ban_
enjoyed practically unlimited opportunities for the extortions and
tyrannies which were the atmosphere of patrician life. Japan introduced
a new theory on this subject, and practically gave the masses to
understand that they possess rights which the classes are bound to
respect, and the Press takes the same line.

It is slowly dawning upon the Korean peasant farmer through the medium
of Japanese and Western teaching, that to be an ultimate sponge is not
his inevitable destiny, that he is entitled to civil rights, equality
before the eye of the law, and protection for his earnings.

The more important of the changes during the last three years which are
beneficial to Korea may be summarized thus: The connection with China
is at an end, and with the victories of Japan the Korean belief in the
unconquerable military power of the Middle Kingdom has been exploded,
and the alliance between two political systems essentially corrupt
has been severed. The distinction between patrician and plebeian has
been abolished, on paper at least, along with domestic slavery, and
the disabilities which rendered the sons of concubines ineligible
for high office. Brutal punishments and torture are done away with,
a convenient coinage has replaced _cash_, an improved educational
system has been launched, a disciplined army and police force has been
created, the Chinese literary examinations are no longer the test of
fitness for official employment, a small measure of judicial reform
has been granted, a railroad from Chemulpo to the capital is being
rapidly pushed to completion, the pressure of the Trades Guilds is
relaxed, a postal system efficiently worked and commanding confidence
has been introduced into all the Provinces, the finances of the country
are being placed on a sound basis, the change from a land-tax paid in
kind to one which is an assessment in money on the value of the land
greatly diminishes the opportunities for official “squeezing,” and
large and judicious retrenchments have been carried out in most of the
metropolitan and provincial departments.

Nevertheless, the Government _Gazette_ of the 12th of August, 1897,
contains the following Royal Edicts:--

 I

 We have been looking into the condition of the country. We have
 realized the imminent danger which threatens the maintenance of
 the nation. But the people of both high and low classes do not
 seem to mind the coming calamity and act indifferently. Under the
 circumstances the country cannot prosper. We are depending upon Our
 Ministers for their advice and help, but they do not respond to
 our trust. How are we going to bring the nation out of its chaotic
 condition? We desire them to pause and to think that they cannot
 enjoy their homes unless the integrity of the nation is preserved.
 We confess that We have not performed our part properly, but Our
 Ministers and other officials ought to have advised Us to refrain from
 wrongdoing as their ancestors had done to Our forefathers. We will
 endeavor to do what is right and proper for our country hereafter,
 and We trust Our subjects will renew their loyalty and patriotism in
 helping Us to carry out Our aim. Our hope is that every citizen in the
 land will consider the country’s interest first before thinking of his
 private affairs. Let Us all join Our hearts to preserve the integrity
 of Our country.

 II

 The welfare of Our people is our constant thought. We realize that
 since last year’s disturbance Our people have been suffering greatly
 on account of lack of peace and order. The dead suffers as much as the
 living, but the Government has not done anything to ameliorate the
 existing condition. This thought makes Us worry to such an extent that
 the affluence by which We are surrounded is rather uncomfortable. If
 this fact is known to Our provincial officials they will do their best
 to ameliorate the condition of the people. Compulsory collection of
 unjust taxes and thousands of lawless officials and Government agents
 rob the helpless masses upon one pretence or another. Why do they
 treat Our people so cruelly? We hereby order the provincial officials
 to look into the various items of illegal taxes now being collected,
 and abolish them all without reservation. Whoever does not heed this
 edict will be punished according to the law.[60]

Though the Koreans of to-day are the product of centuries of
disadvantages, yet after nearly a year spent in the country, during
which I made its people my chief study, I am by no means hopeless of
their future, in spite of the distinctly retrograde movements of 1897.
Two things, however, are essential.

I. As Korea is incapable of reforming herself from within, that she
must be reformed from without.

II. That the power of the Sovereign must be placed under stringent and
permanent constitutional checks.

Hitherto I have written exclusively on Korean internal affairs, her
actual condition, and the prospects of the social and commercial
advancement of the people. I conclude with a few remarks on the
political possibilities of the Korean future, and the relations of
Korea with certain other powers.

The geographical position of Korea, with a frontier conterminous with
those of China and Russia, and divided from Japan by only a narrow sea,
has done much to determine her political relationships. The ascendency
of China grew naturally out of territorial connection, and its duration
for many centuries was at once the cause and effect of a community in
philosophy, customs, and to a great extent in language and religion.
But Chinese control is at an end, and China can scarcely be regarded as
a factor in the Korean situation.

Japan having skilfully asserted her claim to an equality of rights
in Korea, after several diplomatic triumphs and marked success in
obtaining fiscal and commercial ascendency, eventually, by the
overthrow of her rival in the late war, secured political ascendency
likewise; and the long strife between the two empires, of which Korea
had been the unhappy stage, came to an end.

The nominal reason for the war, to which the Japanese Government has
been careful to adhere, was the absolute necessity for the reform of
the internal administration of a State too near the shores of Japan
to be suffered to sink annually deeper into an abyss of misgovernment
and ruin. It is needless to speculate upon the ultimate object which
Japan had in view in undertaking this unusual task. It is enough to
say that she entered upon it with great energy; and that, while the
suggestions she enforced introduced a new _régime_, struck at the heart
of privilege and prerogative, revolutionized social order, and reduced
the Sovereign to the position of a “salaried automaton,” the remarkable
ability with which her demands were formulated gave them the appearance
of simple and natural administrative reforms.

I believe that Japan was thoroughly honest in her efforts; and though
she lacked experience, and was ofttimes rough and tactless, and aroused
hostile feeling needlessly, that she had no intention to subjugate, but
rather to play the _rôle_ of the protector of Korea and the guarantor
of her independence.

For more than a year, in spite of certain mistakes, she made fair
headway, accomplished some useful and important reforms, and initiated
others; and it is only just to her to repeat that those which are
now being carried out are on the lines which she laid down. Then
came Viscount Miura’s savage _coup_, which discredited Japan and
her diplomacy in the eyes of the civilized world. This was followed
by the withdrawal of her garrisons, and of her numerous advisers,
controllers, and drill instructors, and the substitution of an
apparently _laissez-faire_ policy for an active dictatorship. I write
“apparently,” because it cannot for a moment be supposed that this
sagacious and ambitious Empire recognized the unfortunate circumstances
in Korea as a finality, and retired in despair!

The landing of Japanese armies in Korea, and the subsequent
declaration of war with China, while they gave the world the shock
of a surprise, were, as I endeavored to point out briefly in chapter
xiii., neither the result of a sudden impulse, nor of the shakiness of
a Ministry which had to choose between its own downfall and a foreign
war. The latter view could only occur to the most superficial student
of Far Eastern history and politics.

Japan for several centuries has regarded herself as possessing vested
rights to commercial ascendency in Korea. The harvest of the Korean
seas has been reaped by her fishermen, and for 300 years her colonies
have sustained a more or less prosperous existence at Fusan. Her
resentment of the pretensions of China in Korea, though debarred for
a considerable time from active exercise, first by the policy of
seclusion pursued by the Tokugawa House, and next by the necessity of
consolidating her own internal polity after the restoration, has never
slumbered.

To deprive China of a suzerainty which, it must be admitted, was not
exercised for the advantage of Korea; to consolidate her own commercial
supremacy; to ensure for herself free access and special privileges; to
establish a virtual protectorate under which no foreign dictation would
be tolerated; to reform Korea on Japanese lines, and to substitute
her own liberal and enlightened civilization for the antique Oriental
conservatism of the Peninsula, are aims which have been kept steadily
in view for forty years, replacing in part the designs which had
existed for several previous centuries.

In order to judge correctly of the action or inaction of Japan during
1896 and 1897, it must be borne in mind not only that her diplomacy is
secret and reticent, but that it is steady; that it has not hitherto
been affected by any great political cataclysms at home; that it has
less of opportunism than that of almost any other nation, and that the
Japanese have as much tenacity and fixity of purpose as any other race.
Also, Japanese policy in Korea is still shaped by the same remarkable
statesmen, who from the day that Japan emerged upon the international
arena have been recognized by the people as their natural leaders, and
who have guided the country through the manifold complications which
beset the path of her enlightened progress with a celerity and freedom
from disaster which have compelled the admiration of the world.

The assassination of the Korean Queen under the auspices of Viscount
Miura, and the universal horror excited by the act, rendered it politic
for Japan to keep out of sight till the storm which threatened to wreck
her _prestige_ in Korea had blown over. This temporary retirement was
arranged with consummate skill. There were no violent dislocations.
The garrisons which were to be withdrawn quietly slipped away, and
were replaced by guards only sufficient for the protection of the
Japanese Legation, the Japanese telegraph, and other property. The
greater number of the Japanese in Korean Government employment fell
naturally out of it as their contracts expired, and quietly retired
from the country. Ministers of experience, proved ability, and courtesy
of demeanor, have succeeded to the post once occupied by Mr. Otori
and Viscount Miura. There has been scarcely any recent interference
with Korean affairs, and the Japanese colonists who were much given
to bullying and blustering are on greatly improved behavior, the most
objectionable among them having been recalled by orders from home.
Diplomatically, Japan has carefully avoided friction with the Korean
Government and the representatives of the other Powers. But to infer
from this that she has abandoned her claims, or has swerved from her
determination to make her patronage essential to the well-being of
Korea would be a grave mistake.

It has been said that whatever Japan lost in Korea Russia gained. It is
true that the King in his terror and apprehension threw himself upon
the protection of the Russian Minister, and remained for more than a
year under the shelter of the Russian flag, and that at his request
a Russian Military Commission arrived to reorganize and drill the
Korean army, that Russia presented 3,000 Berdan rifles to Korea, that a
Russian financier spent the autumn of 1896 in Seoul investigating the
financial resources and prospects of the country, and that the King,
warned by disastrous experiences of betrayal, prefers to trust his
personal safety to his proximity to the Russian military quarters.

But “Russian Ascendency,” in the sense of “_Control_” in which Japanese
ascendency is to be understood, has never existed. The Russian Minister
used the undoubtedly influential position which circumstances gave him
with unexampled moderation, and only brought his influence to bear on
the King in cases of grave misrule. The influence of Russia, however,
grew quietly and naturally, with little of external manifestation, up
to March, 1897, when the publication of a treaty, concluded ten months
before between Russia and Japan,[61] caused something of a revulsion
of feeling in favor of the latter country, and Russia has been slowly
losing ground. Her policy is too pacific to allow of a quarrel with
Japan, and a quarrel would be the inevitable result of any present
attempt at dictatorship in Korea. So far, she has pursued a strictly
opportunist policy, taking no steps except those which have been forced
upon her; and even if the Korean pear were ready to drop into her
mouth, I greatly doubt if she would shake the tree.

At all events, Russia let the opportunity of obtaining ascendency
in Korea go by. It is very likely that she never desired it. It may
be quite incompatible with other aims, at which we can only guess.
At the same time, the influence of Japan is quietly and steadily
increasing. Certainly the great object of the triple intervention
in the treaty negotiations in Shimonoseki was to prevent Japan from
gaining a foothold on the mainland of the Asiatic Continent; but it
does not seem altogether impossible that, by playing a waiting game
and profiting by previous mistakes, she, without assuming a formal
protectorate, may be able to add, for all practical purposes of
commerce and emigration, a mainland province to her Empire. Forecasts
are dangerous things,[62] but it is safe to say that if Russia, not
content with such quiet, military developments as may be in prospect,
were to manifest any aggressive designs on Korea, Japan is powerful
enough to put a brake on the wheel! Korea, however, is incapable
of standing alone, and unless so difficult a matter as a joint
protectorate could be arranged, she must be under the tutelage of
either Japan or Russia.

If Russia were to acquire an actual supremacy, the usual result would
follow. Preferential duties and other imposts would practically make an
end of British trade in Korea with all its large potentialities. The
effacement of British political influence has been effected chiefly by
a policy of _laissez-faire_, which has produced on the Korean mind the
double impression of indifference and feebleness, to which the dubious
and hazy diplomatic relationship naturally contributes. If England has
no contingent interest in the political future of a country rich in
undeveloped resources and valuable harbors, and whose possession by
a hostile Power might be a serious peril to her interests in the Far
East, her policy during the last few years has been a sure method of
evidencing her unconcern.

Though we may have abandoned any political interest in Korea, the
future of British trade in the country remains an important question.
Such influence as England possesses, being exercised through a
non-official channel, and therefore necessarily indirect, is owing to
the abilities, force, and diplomatic tact of Mr. M’Leavy Brown, the
Chief Commissioner of Customs, formerly of H.B.M.’s Chinese Consular
Service. So long as he is in control at the capital, and such upright
and able men as Mr. Hunt, Mr. Oiesen, and Mr. Osborne are Commissioners
at the treaty ports (Appendix D), so long will England be commercially
important in Korean estimation.

The Customs revenue, always increasing, and collected at a cost of 10
per cent. only, is the backbone of Korean finance; and everywhere the
ability and integrity of the administration give the Commissioners an
influence which is necessarily in favor of England, and which produces
an impression even on corrupt Korean officialism. That this service
should remain in our hands is of the utmost practical importance. In
the days of Japanese ascendency there was a great desire to upset the
present arrangement, but it was frustrated by the tact and firmness
of the Chief Commissioner. The next danger is that it should pass
into Russian hands, which would be a severe blow to our _prestige_
and interests. Some of the leading Russian papers are agitating this
question, and the _Novoie Vremia_ of 9th September, 1897, in writing
of the opening of the ports of Mok-po and Chi-nam-po to foreign
trade, says:--“These encroachments are chiefly due to the cleverness
of the British officials who are at the head of the Financial and
Customs Departments of the Korean administration.” It adds, “If Russia
tolerates any further increase in this policy ... Great Britain will
convert the country into one of her best markets.” The _Novoie Vremia_
goes on to urge “the Russian Government to exercise, before it is too
late, a more searching surveillance than at present, to take steps to
reduce the number of British officials in the Korean Government (the
Customs), and to compel Japan to withdraw what are practically the
military garrisons which she has established in Korea.”

Such, in brief outline, is the position of political affairs in Korea
at the close of 1897. Her long and close political connection with
China is severed; she has received from Japan a gift of independence
which she knows not how to use; England, for reasons which may be
guessed at, has withdrawn from any active participation in her affairs;
the other European Powers have no interests to safeguard in that
quarter; and her integrity and independence are at the mercy of the
most patient and the most ambitious of Empires, whose interests in the
Far East are conflicting, if not hostile.

It is with great regret that I take leave of Korea, with Russia and
Japan facing each other across her destinies. The distaste I felt for
the country at first passed into an interest which is almost affection,
and on no previous journey have I made dearer and kinder friends, or
those from whom I parted more regretfully. I saw the last of Seoul
in snow in the blue and violet atmosphere of one of the loveliest of
her winter mornings, and the following day left Chemulpo in a north
wind of merciless severity in the little Government steamer _Hyenik_
for Shanghai, where the quaint Korean flag excited much interest and
questioning as she steamed slowly up the river.


FOOTNOTES:

[60] The good intentions of the Korean Sovereign, as well as the
weakness which renders them ineffective, are typically illustrated in
these two pathetic documents.

[61] See Appendix E.

[62] As “it is the unexpected which happens,” it would not be
surprising if certain moves, ostensibly with the object of placing the
independence of Korea on a firm basis, were made even before these
volumes are published.




APPENDIXES




APPENDIX A.


MISSION STATISTICS FOR KOREA, 1896.

  KEY:
  1: Year of beginning work in Korea.
  2: Number of married male Missionaries.
  3: Number of unmarried male Missionaries.
  4: Number of unmarried female Missionaries.
  5: Number of stations where Missionaries reside.
  6: Number of out stations where no Missionaries reside.

 +-------------------------+------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
 |      NAME OF MISSION.   |  1   |  2  |  3  |  4  |  5  |  6  |
 +-------------------------+------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
 | American Presbyterian   |      |     |     |     |     |     |
 |   Mission (North)       | 1884 |  11 |  2  |  5  |  4  | 25} |
 |                         |      |     |     |     |     |   } |
 | American Presbyterian   |      |     |     |     |     |   } |
 |   Mission (South)       | 1892 |  4  |  2  |  2  |  3  |   } |
 |                         |      |     |     |     |     |   } |
 | Australian Presbyterian |      |     |     |     |     |   } |
 |   Mission               | 1891 |  1  |     |  3  |  1  |   } |
 |                         |      |     |     |     |     |   } |
 | Y.M.C.A. Mission of     |      |     |     |     |     |   } |
 |   Canada                | 1889 |  1  |     |     |  1  |   } |
 |                         |      |     |     |     |     |     |
 | American Meth. Epis.    |      |     |     |     |     |     |
 |   Mission (North)       | 1885 |  8  |  7  |  7  |  4  |  4  |
 |                         |      |     |     |     |     |     |
 | American Meth. Epis.    |      |     |     |     |     |     |
 |   Mission (South)       | 1896 |  1  |     |     |     |     |
 |                         |      |     |     |     |     |     |
 | Ella Thing Memorial     |      |     |     |     |     |     |
 |   Mission (Baptist)     | 1895 |  1  |  1  |  1  |  1  |     |
 |                         |      |     |     |     |     |     |
 | Society for the         |      |     |     |     |     |     |
 | Propagation of the      | 1890 |     |  9  |  7  |  3  |     |
 |      Gospel             |      |     |     |     |     |     |
 |                         |      |     |     |     |     |     |
 | Société des Missions-   |      |     |     |     |     |     |
 |   Étrangères            | 1784 |     | 26  |  8  | 19  | 466 |
 +-------------------------+------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+

  KEY:
  7: Number of organized churches.
  8: Number of churches wholly self-supporting.
  9: Number of churches partially self-supporting.
  10: Number of communicants received during past year.
  11: Number of catechumens or probationers received during past year.
  12: Number dismissed during past year.
  13: Number of deaths during past year.
  14: Present membership.

 +-----------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
 |    NAME OF MISSION.   |  7  |  8  |  9  |  10 |  11 |  12 |  13 |
 +-----------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
 |American Presbyterian  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |   Mission (North)     |}    |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |                       |}    |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |American Presbyterian  |}    |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |   Mission (South)     |}    |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |                       |} 13 |  8  |  5  | 210 | 635 |  3  |  2  |
 |Australian Presbyterian|}    |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |  Mission              |}    |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |                       |}    |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |Y.M.C.A. Mission of    |}    |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |  Canada               |}    |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |                       |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |American Meth. Epis.   |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |  Mission (North)      |  7  |     |  7  |  57 | 588 |     |  2  |
 |                       |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |American Meth. Epis.   |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |  Mission (South)      |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |                       |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |Ella Thing Memorial    |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |  Mission (Baptist)    |     |     |     |     |  3  |     |     |
 |                       |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |Society for the        |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |  Propagation of the   |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |  Gospel               |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |                       |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |Société des Missions-  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |  Étrangères           |  18 |     |     |1,250|     |     | 515 |
 +-----------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+

  KEY:
  15: Number of Sabbath schools.
  16: Number of pupils in Sabbath schools.
  17: Number of day schools.
  18: Number of pupils in day schools.
  19: Number of boarding-schools for boys.
  20: Number of boarding-schools for girls.

 +-----------------------+------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
 |    NAME OF MISSION.   |  14  |  15 |  16 |  17 |  18 |  19 |  20 |
 +-----------------------+------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
 |American Presbyterian  |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |  Mission (North)      |      |     |     | { 7 | 139 |  1  |  1  |
 |                       |      |     |     | {   |     |     |     |
 |American Presbyterian  |      |     |     | {   |     |     |     |
 |  Mission (South)      |      |     |     | {   |     |     |     |
 |                       |  510 |  10 | 783 | {   |     |     |     |
 |Australian Presbyterian|      |     |     | {   |     |     |     |
 |  Mission              |      |     |     | {   |     |     |  1  |
 |                       |      |     |     | {   |     |     |     |
 |Y.M.C.A. Mission of    |      |     |     | {   |     |     |     |
 |  Canada               |      |     |     | {   |     |     |     |
 |                       |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |American Meth. Epis.   |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |  Mission (North)      |  266 |   7 | 512 |  4  | 121 |  1  |  1  |
 |                       |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |American Meth. Epis.   |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |  Mission (South)      |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |                       |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |Ella Thing Memorial    |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |  Mission (Baptist)    |   1  |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |                       |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |Society for the        |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |  Propagation of the   |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |  Gospel               |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |                       |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |
 |Société des Missions-  |      |     |     |     |     |    \ /    |
 |  Étrangères           |28,802|     |     | 21  | 204 |     2     |
 +-----------------------+------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+

  KEY:
  21: Number of pupils in boarding-schools for boys.
  22: Number of pupils in boarding-schools for girls.
  23: Number of theological schools.
  24: Number of theological students.
  25: Number of native ministers.
  26: Number of unordained preachers and helpers.

 +-----------------------+------+------+------+------+------+------+
 |    NAME OF MISSION.   |  21  |  22  |  23  |  24  |  25  |  26  |
 +-----------------------+------+------+------+------+------+------+
 |American Presbyterian  |      |      |      |      |      |      |
 |  Mission (North)      |  50  |  35  |      |      |      |  13  |
 |                       |      |      |      |      |      |      |
 |American Presbyterian  |      |      |      |      |      |      |
 |  Mission (South)      |      |      |      |      |      |   2  |
 |                       |      |      |      |      |      |      |
 |Australian Presbyterian|      |      |      |      |      |      |
 |  Mission              |      |   9  |      |      |      |   1  |
 |                       |      |      |      |      |      |      |
 |Y.M.C.A. Mission of    |      |      |      |      |      |      |
 |  Canada               |      |      |      |      |      |      |
 |                       |      |      |      |      |      |      |
 |American Meth. Epis.   |      |      |      |      |      |      |
 |  Mission (North)      | 110  |  50  |      |      |      |  10  |
 |                       |      |      |      |      |      |      |
 |American Meth. Epis.   |      |      |      |      |      |      |
 |  Mission (South)      |      |      |      |      |      |      |
 |                       |      |      |      |      |      |      |
 |Ella Thing Memorial    |      |      |      |      |      |      |
 |  Mission (Baptist)    |      |      |      |      |      |      |
 |                       |      |      |      |      |      |      |
 |Society for the        |      |      |      |      |      |      |
 |  Propagation of the   |      |      |      |      |      |      |
 |  Gospel               |      |      |      |      |      |      |
 |                       |      |      |      |      |      |      |
 |Société des Missions-  |     \ /     |      |      |      |      |
 |  Étrangères           |     271     |  1   |  24  |  3   |  16  |
 +-----------------------+------+------+------+------+------+------+

  KEY:
  27: Number of Bible-women.
  28: Number of hospitals.
  29: Number of in-patients treated during past year.
  30: Number of dispensaries.
  31: Number of patients treated during past year.
  32: Native contributions for all purposes during past year.

 +-------------------------+------+-----+------+-----+------+-----------+
 |      NAME OF MISSION.   |  27  |  28 |  29  | 30  |  31  |     32    |
 +-------------------------+------+-----+------+-----+------+-----------+
 | American Presbyterian   |      |     |      |     |      |           |
 |   Mission (North)       |  4   |  3  | 339  |  7  |20,295|$796.44[63]|
 |                         |      |     |      |     |      |           |
 | American Presbyterian   |      |     |      |     |      |           |
 |   Mission (South)       |  1   |     |      |  1  | 2,000|           |
 |                         |      |     |      |     |      |           |
 | Australian Presbyterian |      |     |      |     |      |           |
 |   Mission               |  1   |     |      |     |      |           |
 |                         |      |     |      |     |      |           |
 | Y.M.C.A. Mission of     |      |     |      |     |      |           |
 |   Canada                |      |     |      |     |      |           |
 |                         |      |     |      |     |      |           |
 | American Meth. Epis.    |      |     |      |     |      |           |
 |   Mission (North)       |  5   |  2  |  116 |  4  | 7,778|   $647.37 |
 |                         |      |     |      |     |      |           |
 | American Meth. Epis.    |      |     |      |     |      |           |
 |   Mission (South)       |      |     |      |     |      |           |
 |                         |      |     |      |     |      |           |
 | Ella Thing Memorial     |      |     |      |     |      |           |
 |   Mission (Baptist)     |      |     |      |     |      |    $.60   |
 |                         |      |     |      |     |      |           |
 | Society for the         |      |     |      |     |      |           |
 | Propagation of the      |      |     |      |     |      |           |
 |      Gospel             |      |  3  |  795 |  3  |29,786|           |
 |                         |      |     |      |     |      |           |
 | Société des Missions-   |      |     |      |     |      |           |
 |   Étrangères            |      |     |      |     |      |           |
 +-------------------------+------+-----+------+-----+------+-----------+


FOOTNOTES:

[63] Besides much in labor and in contributions for support of native
evangelists, schools, and the enlargement and construction of Church
edifices.




APPENDIX B


DIRECT FOREIGN TRADE OF KOREA, 1886-96

(_i.e._ net value of foreign goods imported in foreign, or
foreign-type, vessels into the Treaty Ports, and taken cognizance of
by the foreign Customs; and of native goods similarly exported and
re-exported from the Treaty Ports to foreign countries.)

 +------+---------------------------+----------------------+------------+
 |      |  Net imports of Foreign   |  Exports and         |            |
 |      | Goods (_i.e._ exclusive of|   Re-exports[64]     |            |
 | Year.| Foreign Goods re-exported |   of Native Goods to |   Total.   |
 |      |  to Foreign Countries).   |   Foreign Countries. |            |
 +------+---------------------------+----------------------+------------+
 | 1886 |        $2,474.185         |      $ 504,225       |$ 2,978,410 |
 | 1887 |         2,815,441         |        804,996       |  3,620,437 |
 | 1888 |         3,046,443         |        867,058       |  3,913,501 |
 | 1889 |         3,377,815         |      1,233,841       |  4,611,656 |
 | 1890 |         4,727,839         |      3,550,478       |  8,278 317 |
 | 1891 |         5,256,468         |      3,366.344       |  8,622.812 |
 | 1892 |         4,598,485         |      2,443,739       |  7,042,224 |
 | 1893 |         3.880,155         |      1,698,116       |  5,578,271 |
 | 1894 |         5,831,563         |      2,311,215       |  8,142,778 |
 | 1895 |         8,088,213         |      2,481,808       | 10,570,021 |
 | 1896 |         6,531,324         |      4,728,700       | 11,260,024 |
 +------+---------------------------+----------------------+------------+

 _Note._--The increase in the foreign trade of Korea between 1886
 and 1896 may not have been so great as the above figures without
 explanation would imply. It is generally stated that side by side
 with the trade in foreign vessels at the Treaty Ports a considerable
 traffic has been carried on by junk between non-Treaty ports in Korea
 and ports in China and Japan. This junk trade was probably much larger
 in the earlier years of the period the figures of which are compared,
 and the rapid development shown in the table may be partly due to
 the increasing transfer of traffic from native craft to foreign-type
 vessels which offer greater regularity and safety and less delay.


COMPARATIVE TABLE OF THE NET DUES AND DUTIES COLLECTED AT THE THREE
PORTS FOR THE YEARS 1884-96

 +------+--------------+--------------+-------------+-----------+
 | Year.|Import Duties.|Export Duties.|Tonnage Dues.|  Total.   |
 +------+--------------+--------------+-------------+-----------+
 | 1884 | $ 79,373.71  | $ 19,234.74  | $ 3,478.19  |$102,086.64|
 | 1885 |  119,364.41  |   19,602.22  |   2,996.90  | 141,963.53|
 | 1886 |  132,757.12  |   24,812.11  |   2,708.75  | 160,277.98|
 | 1887 |  203,271.68  |   40,384.52  |   3,045.12  | 246,701.32|
 | 1888 |  219,759.81  |   43,330.62  |   4,124.55  | 267,214.98|
 | 1889 |  213,457.49  |   61,835.23  |   4,707.04  | 279,999.76|
 | 1890 |  327,460.11  |  178,552.14  |   8,587.90  | 514,600.15|
 | 1891 |  372,022.07  |  168,096.36  |   8,940.26  | 549,058.69|
 | 1892 |  308,954.13  |  123,212.24  |   6,247.05  | 438,413.42|
 | 1893 |  262,679.28  |   85,720.22  |   5,717.16  | 354,116.66|
 | 1894 |  357,828.34  |  115,779.33  |   7,398.64  | 481,006.31|
 | 1895 |  601,588.06  |  124,261.22  |  15,448.20  | 741,297.48|
 | 1896 |  448,137.16  |  226,342.45  |  17,304.75  | 691,784.36|
 +------+--------------+--------------+-------------+-----------+


COMPARATIVE STATEMENT OF THE JAPANESE AND NON-JAPANESE COTTON GOODS
IMPORTED INTO KOREA DURING THE YEAR 1896

 ------------------+----------------+-----------+-----------+
                   | Classification |       Japanese.       |
    Description.   |       of       +-----------+-----------+
                   |    Quantity.   | Quantity. |  Value.   |
 ------------------+----------------+-----------+-----------+
 Shirtings--Gray   |                |           |     $     |
   Plain           |     Pieces     |   6,715   |    23,660 |
 Shirtings--White  |       “        |      31   |       121 |
 T-Cloths          |       “        |   1,211   |     2,719 |
 Drills            |       “        |     163   |       634 |
 Turkey-Red Cloths |       “        |   1,652   |     3,663 |
 Sheetings         |       “        |  30,184   |   115,914 |
 Cotton Flannel    |       “        |     762   |     2,870 |
 Cotton Blankets   |     Pairs      |   1,625   |     3,883 |
 Cotton Yarn and   |                |           |           |
   Thread          |     Piculs     |  12,821   |   368,064 |
                   |                |           |           |
                   |     Value      |           |   521,528 |
 Cotton Goods,     |                |           |           |
   Unclassed       |       “        |    [65]   |   644,671 |
                   |                |           |           |
       Total       |     Value      |           | 1,166,199 |

 ------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
                   |     Non-Japanese.     |        Total.         |
    Description.   +-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
                   | Quantity. |  Value.   | Quantity. |  Value.   |
 ------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
 Shirtings--Gray   |           |     $     |           |     $     |
   Plain           |  428,911  | 1,567,967 |  435,626  | 1,591,627 |
 Shirtings--White  |    5,445  |    21,768 |    5,476  |    21,889 |
 T-Cloths          |    1,660  |     4,177 |    2,871  |     6,896 |
 Drills            |   11,583  |    47,998 |   11,746  |    48,632 |
 Turkey-Red Cloths |    7,519  |    17,349 |    9,171  |    21,012 |
 Sheetings         |   14,793  |    58,455 |   44,977  |   174,369 |
 Cotton Flannel    |    1,432  |     3,927 |    2,194  |     6,797 |
 Cotton Blankets   |           |           |    1,625  |     3,883 |
 Cotton Yarn and   |           |           |           |           |
   Thread          |    1,795  |    71,386 |   14,616  |   439,450 |
                   |           |           |           |           |
                   |           | 1,793,027 |           | 2,314,555 |
 Cotton Goods,     |           |           |           |           |
   Unclassed       |           |[66]379,319|           | 1,023,990 |
                   |           |           |           |           |
       Total       |           | 2,172,346 |           | 3,338,545 |


FOOTNOTES:

[64] _i.e._ including native goods imported from another Korean port
and re-exported to a foreign country.

[65] Chiefly narrow-width cloth, gray or white, checked or plain.

[66] Including $2,549 Chinese Cottons.




APPENDIX C


RETURN of Principal Articles of Export (net) to Foreign Countries for
the Years 1896-95

 --------------------+-----------------+----------------+---------------
                     |    Chemulpo.    |     Fusan.     |    Wön-san.
     Articles.       +--------+--------+--------+-------+-------+-------
                     |  1896. |  1895. | 1896.  | 1895. | 1896. | 1895.
 --------------------+--------+--------+--------+-------+-------+-------
 Beans               |£48,485 |£45,679 |£65,731 |£22,337|£24,132|£32,049
 Fish (dried manure) |   ..   |   ..   |  4,296 |   639 | 4,394 |    312
 Cowhides            |  8,789 | 14,036 | 11,077 |37,225 | 4,424 |  6,152
 Ginseng             | 29,739 |    575 |   ..   |  ..   |   ..  |    ..
 Paper               |  2,326 |  1,785 |  1,806 | 2,236 |    24 |      9
 Rice                | 92,444 | 62,390 |178,852 |17,646 |   549 |    ..
 Seaweed             |     55 |     40 |  6,705 | 3,809 |   ..  |    ..
 Sundries            | 12,713 |  8,992 | 13,633 | 9,361 | 2,101 |  3,590
                     +--------+--------+--------+-------+-------+-------
     Total           |£194,551|£133,497|£282,100|£93,253|£35,624|£42,112
 --------------------+--------+--------+--------+-------+-------+-------

 ------------------------+--------------------+--------------------+
                         |         1896.      |          1895.     |
                         +----------+---------+----------+---------+
                         |Currency. |Sterling.|Currency. |Sterling.|
                         +----------+---------+----------+---------+
 Total exports from Korea|$4,728,700| £512,275|$2,481,808| £268,862|
 ------------------------+----------+---------+----------+---------+


 RETURN of Principal Articles of Foreign Import (net: _i.e._ excluding
 Re-exports) to Open Ports of Korea during the Years 1896-95.

 ------------------+-----------------+-----------------+----------------
                   |    Chemulpo.    |       Fusan.    |     Wön-san.
      Articles.    +--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+-------
                   | 1896.  | 1895.  | 1896.  | 1895.  | 1896.  | 1895.
 ------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+-------
 Cotton goods--    |        |        |        |        |        |
   Shirtings       |£103,196|£172,549|£51,920 |£54,911 |£21,982 |£55,190
   Lawns and       |        |        |        |        |        |
     muslins       |  6,956 | 11,554 | 10,670 |  8,183 |  1,072 |  2,066
 Sheetings--       |        |        |        |        |        |
   Japanese        | 12,508 |  7,199 |  ...   |  ...   |     40 |  1,330
   English and     |        |        |        |        |        |
     American      |  6,736 |  8,594 |  ...   |  ...   |     23 |  4,500
 Japanese piece-   |        |        |        |        |        |
     goods         | 14,015 | 20,129 | 24,944 | 19,432 | 30,867 | 38,608
 Yarn--            |        |        |        |        |        |
   Japanese        | 27,271 | 26,098 | 11,018 |  3,886 |  1,590 |  3,483
   English and     |        |        |        |        |        |
     Indian        |  5,634 |  4,876 |    222 |  ...   |  1,871 |  4,364
 Other cottons     | 14,394 | 29,065 |  6,363 |  4,836 |  8,732 | 15,125
                   +--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------
     Total         |£190,710|£280,064|£105,137|£91,238 |£66,177 |£124,666
                   +--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------
 Woolens           |  3,266 |  4,933 |    578 |    884 |    182 |    333
                   +--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------
 Metals            |  7,172 |  8,620 | 15,253 | 10,342 |  7,690 |  6,217
                   +--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------
 Sundries--        |        |        |        |        |        |
   Dyes            |  4,818 | 10,794 |  2,363 |  3,084 |    777 |  1,667
   Grass-cloths    | 22,358 | 13,641 |  3,546 |  1,402 |  2,241 |  3,154
   Matches         |  4,798 |  3,575 |  4,571 |  3,348 |  2,018 |  1,680
   Kerosene oil--  |        |        |        |        |        |
     American      | 20,035 |  9,819 |  9,560 |  7,479 |  6,463 |  3,990
     Russian       |  9,312 |    457 |  4,513 |    478 |     69 |      1
   Provisions      |  5,717 |  3,859 |  2,358 |  2,024 |    381 |  ...
   Saké            |  3,018 |  9,639 |  2,972 |  2,818 |  1,203 |  1,176
   Silk piece-goods| 28,943 | 65,057 |  8,167 |  5,606 |  4,058 | 12,848
   Other articles  | 89,417 |111,902 | 50,828 | 38,859 | 26,241 | 30,884
                   +--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------
     Total         |£188,416|£228,743|£88,878 |£65,098 |£43,451 |£55,400
                   +--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------
    Grand total    |£382,203|£522,360|£209,846|£167,562|£117,500|£186,616
    Less excess of |        |        |        |        |        |
      re-exports   |        |        |        |        |        |
      over imports |        |        |        |        |        |
      in some      |        |        |        |        |        |
      articles     |  1,088 |    596 |  ...   |  ...   |  ...   |    126
                   +--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------
     Net total     |£381,115|£521,764|£209,846|£167,562|£117,500|£186,490
 ------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
                              1896.                        1895.
                  ------------------------------------------------------
                    Currency.      Sterling.    Currency.    Sterling.
                  ------------------------------------------------------
  Total for Korea  $6,539,630[67]  £708,461   $8,084,465[67] £875,816
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------


RETURN of all Shipping Vessels Entered at the Open Ports of Korea
during the Year 1896.

  KEY:
  1 No. of Vessels
  2 Tons

 ------------+--------------------------+--------------------------+
             |        Chemulpo.         |          Fusan.          |
             +------------+-------------+------------+-------------+
 Nationality.|  Sailing.  |   Steam.    |  Sailing.  |   Steam.    |
             +-----+------+-----+-------+-----+------+-----+-------+
             |     |      |     |       |     |      |     |       |
             |  1  |   2  |  1  |   2   |  1  |   2  |  1  |   2   |
 ------------+-----+------+-----+-------+-----+------+-----+-------+
  American   |   2 |   158|     |       |     |      |     |       |
  British    |     |      |   3 |  3,381|     |      |   5 |  5,635|
  Chinese    |  56 |   557|     |       |     |      |     |       |
  German     |     |      |   1 |    808|     |      |   5 |  4,732|
  Japanese   | 307 |10,278| 154 |118,145| 537 |17,035| 292 |210,645|
  Norwegian  |     |      |   2 |  1,082|     |      |     |       |
  Russian    |     |      |   2 |  2,202|     |      |  13 | 10,381|
  Korean     | 111 | 3,572|  51 | 10,375|   9 |   500|  16 |  5,900|
             +-----+------+-----+-------+-----+------+-----+-------+
  Total      | 476 |14,565| 213 |135,993| 546 |17,535| 331 |237,293|
   “ for 1895| 531 |14,449| 242 |108,021| 497 |14,300| 272 |180,784|
 ------------+-----+------+-----+-------+-----+------+-----+-------+

 ------------+------------------------+---------------
             |        Wön-san.        |    Korea.
             +-----------+------------+---------------
 Nationality.|  Sailing. |   Steam.   |    Total.
             +-----+-----+-----+------+------+--------
             |     |     |     |      |      |
             |  1  |  2  |  1  |   2  |   1  |   2
 ------------+-----+-----+-----+------+------+--------
  American   |     |     |     |      |     2|     158
  British    |     |     |   5 | 5,635|    13|  14,651
  Chinese    |     |     |     |      |    56|     557
  German     |     |     |   4 | 3,612|    10|   9,152
  Japanese   |  41 |3,227|  58 |65,654| 1,389| 424,984
  Norwegian  |     |     |     |      |     2|   1,082
  Russian    |     |     |  10 |10,234|    25|  22,817
  Korean     |   8 |  572|  28 | 4,840|   223|  25,759
             +-----+-----+-----+------+------+---------
  Total      |  49 |3,799| 105 |89,975| 1,720| 499,160
   “ for 1895|  61 |5,029|  93 |83,547| 1,696| 406,130
 ------------+-----+-----+-----+------+------+---------


FOOTNOTES:

[67] 1 dollar = 2s. 2d.




APPENDIX D


The population of the three Korean treaty ports was as follows in
January, 1897:--

                           Chemulpo Settlement.
  Japanese                        3,904
  Chinese                           404
  British                            15
  German                             12
  American                            7
  French                              7
  Norwegian                           3
  Greek                               3
  Italian                             1
  Portuguese                          1
                                   -----
                         Total    4,357
  Estimated native population     6,756

                             Fusan Settlement.
  Japanese                        5,508
  Chinese                            34
  British                            10
  American                            7
  German                              2
  Danish                              1
  French                              1
  Italian                             1
                                  -----
                        Total     5,564

  Estimated native population of Fusan City and the
    Prefecture of Tung-nai       33,000

                           Wön-san Settlement.
  Japanese                        1,299
  Chinese                            39
  American                            8
  German                              3
  British                             2
  French                              2
  Russian                             2
  Danish                              1
  Norwegian                           1
                                  -----
                        Total     1,357
  Estimated native population    15,000




APPENDIX E

TREATY BETWEEN JAPAN AND RUSSIA WITH REPLY OF H.E. THE KOREAN MINISTER
FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS


MEMORANDUM

The Representatives of Russia and Japan at Seoul, having conferred
under the identical instructions from their respective Governments,
have arrived at the following conclusions:--

 While leaving the matter of His Majesty’s, the King of Korea,
 return to the Palace entirely to his own discretion and judgment,
 the Representatives of Russia and Japan will friendly advise His
 Majesty to return to that place, when no doubts could be entertained
 concerning his safety.

 The Japanese Representative, on his part, gives the assurance, that
 the most complete and effective measures will be taken for the control
 of Japanese _soshi_.

 The present Cabinet Ministers have been appointed by His Majesty by
 his own free will, and most of them have held ministerial or other
 high offices during the last two years and are known to be liberal and
 moderate men.

 The two Representatives will always aim at recommending His Majesty to
 appoint liberal and moderate men as Ministers, and to show clemency to
 his subjects.

 The Representative of Russia quite agrees with the Representative
 of Japan that at the present state of affairs in Korea it may be
 necessary to have Japanese guards stationed at some places for the
 protection of the Japanese telegraph line between Fusan and Seoul,
 and that these guards, now consisting of three companies of soldiers,
 should be withdrawn as soon as possible and replaced by gendarmes,
 who will be distributed as follows: fifty men at Fusan, fifty men at
 Ka-heung, and ten men each at ten intermediate posts between Fusan and
 Seoul.

 This distribution may be liable to some changes, but the total number
 of the gendarme force shall never exceed two hundred men, who will
 afterwards gradually be withdrawn from such places, where peace and
 order have been restored by the Korean Government.

 For the protection of the Japanese settlements at Seoul and the open
 ports against possible attacks by the Korean populace, two companies
 of Japanese troops may be stationed at Seoul, one company at Fusan
 and one at Wön-san, each company not to exceed two hundred men. These
 troops will be quartered near the settlements, and shall be withdrawn
 as soon as no apprehension of such attacks could be entertained.

 For the protection of the Russian Legation and Consulates the Russian
 Government may also keep guards not exceeding the number of Japanese
 troops at those places, and which will be withdrawn as soon as
 tranquillity in the interior is completely restored.

  (Signed)     C. WAEBER,
  _Representative of Russia_.

  J. KOMURA,
  _Representative of Japan_.

 SEOUL, _14th May, 1896_.


PROTOCOL

The Secretary of State, Prince Lobanow-Rostovskey, Foreign Minister of
Russia, and the Marshal Marquis Yamagata, Ambassador Extraordinary of
His Majesty the Emperor of Japan, having exchanged their views on the
situation of Korea, agreed upon the following articles:--


 I

 For the remedy of the financial difficulties of Korea, the Governments
 of Russia and Japan will advise the Korean Government to retrench all
 superfluous expenditure, and to establish a balance between expenses
 and revenues. If, in consequence of reforms deemed indispensable, it
 may be necessary to have recourse to foreign loans, both Governments
 shall by mutual consent give their support to Korea.


 II

 The Governments of Russia and Japan shall endeavor to leave to Korea,
 as far as the financial and economical situation of that country will
 permit, the formation and maintenance of a national armed force and
 police of such proportions as will be sufficient for the preservation
 of the internal peace, without foreign support.


 III

 With a view to facilitate communications with Korea, the Japanese
 Government may continue (_continuera_) to administer the telegraph
 lines which are at present in its hands.

 It is reserved to Russia (the rights) of building a telegraph line
 between Seoul and her frontiers.

 These different lines can be repurchased by the Korean Government, so
 soon as it has the means to do so.


 IV

 In case the above matters should require a more exact or detailed
 explanation, or if subsequently some other points should present
 themselves upon which it may be necessary to confer, the
 Representatives of both Governments shall be authorized to negotiate
 in a spirit of friendship.

  (Signed)    LOBANOW.
  YAMAGATA.

 MOSCOW, _9th_ June, 1896.

The following is the exact translation of the reply sent to the
Japanese Minister by the Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs, concerning
the Russo-Japanese Convention:--

  MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS,
  _Mar. 9th, 2nd year of Kun-yang_ (1897).

 SIR--I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your despatch
 of the 2nd instant, informing me that, on the 14th day of May last,
 a memorandum was signed at Seoul by H.E. Mr. Komura, the former
 Japanese Minister Resident, and the Russian Minister, and that, on the
 4th of June of the same year, an Agreement was signed at Moscow, by
 H.E. Marshal Yamagata, the Japanese Ambassador, and the Minister for
 Foreign Affairs of Russia; and that these two documents have been laid
 publicly before the Imperial Diet. You further inform me that on the
 26th ultimo you received a telegram from your Government, pointing out
 that the above-mentioned Agreement and memorandum in no way reflect
 upon, but, on the contrary, are meant to strengthen, the independence
 of Korea,--this being the object which the Governments of Japan and
 Russia had in view,--and you cherish the confident hope that my
 Government will not fail to appreciate this intention. In accordance
 with telegraphic instructions received from the Imperial Minister of
 Foreign Affairs you enclose copies of the Agreements referred to.

 I beg to express my sincere thanks for your despatch and the
 information it conveys. I would observe, however, that as my
 Government has not joined in concluding these two Agreements, its
 freedom of action as an independent Power cannot be restricted by
 their provisions.--I have, etc.,

  (Signed)     YE WANYONG,
  _Minister of State for Foreign Affairs_.
  H.E. MR. KATO,
  _Minister of Japan, etc._




INDEX


  Abbot, a refined, 84.

  Absolutism of the Korean crown reimposed, 377.

  Agricultural implements, rude and few, 161.

  Agriculture, primitive character of, 78;
    improved methods in the Han Valley, 100;
    methods of, 160;
    ministry of, 383.

  Ah Wong, 31.

  Allen, Mr. Clement, 185;
    Dr., 352, 353, 354, 443.

  Altar-piece, an unique, 148.

  American Missions, 22, 63, 172, 279, 311, 346-350, 388.

  Am-nok River, the, 14, 17, 74.

  Amur Province, the, 234, 242.

  Amur River, the, 219, 220, 233, 241, 242, 244.

  An-byöng, 163.

  Ancestral temple, an, 87;
    worship, 61, 63, 88, 401.

  An-chin-Miriok, 345.

  Ang-paks, 77, 125, 157.

  Animal and Bird life, 73, 74, 150.

  An Ju, 328.

  An-kil Yung Pass, crossing the, 330.

  An-mun-chai, the, 138, 141, 144, 146.

  An object of curiosity, 88, 94, 97, 127, 146.

  Appenzeller, Rev. H. G., 388.

  A-ra-rüng style of music, 166.

  Archipelago, a remarkable, 15.

  Army, 56, 57, 210;
    standing, an extravagance, 434.

  A-san, 206;
    battle of, 207.

  Assassination of the Queen, 271, 455.

  Assembly, a national, 373.

  Atai-jo, king, 169.

  Australian ladies, mission work by, 28.


  Baikal horses, 237.

  Banks and Banking, 26.

  “Bannermen,” (irregular soldiery) of Manchuria, 190, 191.

  Barter, the mode of exchange, 78.

  Bas-reliefs, 84.

  Beacon fires, 97, 105.

  Beheading abolished, 265.

  “Believing Mind, Temple of the,” 139.

  Bell of Song-do, 295;
    of Seoul, the great (see Seoul).

  Birukoff, Mr., 388.

  Botany, Native, 17, 95, 98.

  Bows and arrows, reliance on in Manchuria, 190.

  Bridges, infamous character of the, 171;
    precarious, 293.

  Brigands of Manchuria, 189.

  British political influence and trade, 457.

  Broughton Bay, junk excursion in, 15, 173.

  Brown, Mr. M’Leavy, 37, 369, 397, 435, 448, 457.

  Buddha, statues of, 136, 144.

  Buddha worship, 137.

  Buddhism, disestablishment of, 61;
    moribund, 142;
    introduction of, 148;
    palmy days of Korean, 169;
    gross superstitions of, 399;
    relics of Korean, 286.

  Buddhist hells, representations of, 139;
    nunneries, 115, 135.

  Buddhistic legends, 145.

  Buddhist monastery and temple, 63, 76, 79, 84, 319.

  Bull, Korean, as a beast of burden, 36, 110;
    used for ploughing, 162.

  Burial customs, 63, 204, 286, 288-291.

  Burial places, 36, 61.

  Butchers, methods of, 172.


  Cabinet, the, 371, 374, 375;
    ministers, execution of, 367.

  Campbell, Mr., 133, 135, 138, 326.

  Carles, Consul, 130, 329, 355.

  Cavalry, Chinese, General Tso’s brigade, 210.

  Cave, a remarkable, 99.

  Cham-su-ki, 95, 96;
    tree, 96.

  Chang-an Sa, 137, 141, 142, 143, 144, 150, 160.

  Charms, 408.

  Cha-san, 322, 344.

  Che-chön, 106.

  Chefoo, arrival at, 185;
    return to, 213.

  Chemulpo, 20, 30, 33;
    war excitement at, 178;
    exodus of Chinese from, 182;
    return of authoress to, 245;
    accident on the way to, 267;
    arrival at, 357;
    railroad from to the capital, 450;
    leave from, 459;
    banks at, 32, 436;
    cemetery at, 318;
    Chinese settlement in, 31, 245;
    Japanese settlement in, 31, 181, 246;
    Korean quarter, 33;
    occupation of, by Japanese, 206, 245;
    population of, 469;
    trade in, 33.

  Children, non-burial of in Manchuria, 204;
    sale of dæmons, 412.

  Chil-sung Mon, the, 315, 316.

  China, diplomatic relations with Korea, 19, 182.

  Chinese in Korea, 12, 20, 182;
    predominant influence of, 22, 452;
    their settlement in Chemulpo, 31;
    the colony at Seoul, 44;
    consternation in Chinese colony, 182;
    connection with Korea severed, 458.

  Chinese Manchuria, 237, 244.

  Chin-nam-po, 19, 357, 458.

  Chino-Japanese War, origin of the, 206.

  Chöi Sok dæmon, 420.

  Chol-muri Kaut, the, 411.

  Chŏl-yong-To, 23.

  Chong-dong, 427, 437.

  Chöng-phöng, town of, 90, 93, 94;
    female curiosity at, 94.

  Chong-söp (abbots), 141.

  Chon-shin dæmons, 418.

  Chön-yaing, 88.

  _Chosen Magazine, The_, 440.

  Cho Wang dæmon, 420.

  Christianity, progress of, 201, 202.

  Christian missions (see Missionaries and the Missions).

  Christians, native, 65, 227.

  Christian work in Seoul, 63;
    in Korea, 65;
    Korean estimate of, 438.

  Christie, Dr., 198, 201, 202, 211.

  Chu-la, 25, 306.

  Chun-chön, 109.

  Chung-Chong-Do, 75, 84.

  Chyu-pha Pass, the, 129.

  Class privileges, 101, 446, 450.

  Climate, healthy character of, 16;
    at Mukden, 201.

  Coasts, character of, 15;
    tour along, 150.

  Coinage of, 20, 66, 398.

  Concubinage, a recognized institution, 342.

  Confucian college, the, 382;
    temples, 76, 83, 94, 103.

  Confucianism in Korea, 21, 22.

  Conjugal fidelity, 116, 341, 343.

  Conspiracies, frequency of, 447.

  Constitutional changes, 371-386.

  Conventions with China, renunciation of the, 207.

  Cookery of the Koreans, 154.

  Corfe, Bishop, 33, 37, 49, 63, 64, 66, 68.

  Corfe Mission at Seoul, 30, 33, 64, 68.

  Corruption, 431, 448.

  Cossacks, Russian, rigid discipline of, 238.

  Costumes, 26, 27, 45, 46.

  Council of State, formation of a, 370, 375.

  Council of State (Korean), organization of, 375.

  Court functionaries, 428, 430.

  Crown Prince, the, 253, 273, 362, 365, 428;
    Princess, the, 273.

  Customs, Korean, 59, 78, 101, 114, 127, 265, 266, 287, 359.

  Customs revenue the backbone of Korean finance, 458.

  Curzon, the Hon. G. W., 138.


  Dæmon festivals, 410.

  Dæmons, classification of, 421.

  Dæmon Worship, 79;
    fear of dæmons, 127, 129;
    dæmonism, 399, 404, 409, 417.

  Dallet’s Histoire de l’Église de Korée, 11;
    quoted in regard to the position of women, 341, 355.

  Dancing women, 344, 352.

  Death, customs connected with, 63.

  Deluge, a Manchurian, 193.

  Diamond Mountain Monasteries, 133.

  Diamond Mountain, the, 74, 75, 103, 129, 133, 140.

  Disciples, Five Hundred, Temple to, 170.

  Distinctions between Patrician and Plebeian abolished, 385.

  Divination, 407, 408.

  Dog-infested Seoul, 47.

  Dog meat, use of, 154.

  Dogs, 47, 72.

  Dolmens, 131.

  Domestic animals, few, 161;
    life unknown, 355;
    slaves, 47.

  Domiciliary visit, 304.

  Dragon dæmons, 417.

  Drunkenness common, 91.

  Dwellings, 77.

  Dye, General, American military adviser, 271, 272, 277, 279.

  Dynasty, Korean, worn out, 255.


  Eastern Siberia, maritime provinces of, 242-244.

  Eastern Siberian, drift of population to, 244.

  _Edgar_, H. M. S., 302.

  Edicts. See Royal.

  Education, 143, 203, 387, 438;
    the ministry of, 382, 391.

  Education and Foreign Trade, 387.

  Education in the hamlets, 79.

  “Eight Views,” the, 155.

  Elm trees, fine, 93.

  English mission, the first, 63.

  English-speaking Koreans at Seoul, 49.

  Eternal Rest, Temple of, 134.

  Eui-chyeng Pu (the cabinet), 371, 377.

  Europeans, Korean estimate of, 438.

  Examinations for official position, 152;
    royal exams, abolished, 388.

  Exorcists and Exorcism, 114, 344, 350, 400, 405, 423.

  Exports and Imports, 392;
    returns of, 466, 467.

  Extortions and tyrannies, 450.


  Falconry, 74.

  Farmers, 447, 450.

  Fauna of, 16.

  Fengtien Cavalry Brigade, 210.

  Ferguson & Co., Messrs., 185.

  Fermented liquors, 91, 92.

  Ferries, 104.

  Ferry boat, an ingenious, 131.

  Festivals, 410-413.

  Fetishes, 416, 421.

  Fever, attack of, 193.

  Finance, 396.

  Fire Dragon Pool, the, 145.

  Fish and Fishing, 158.

  “Five Hundred Disciples,” temple of the, 170.

  Floods in Manchuria, 193.

  Flora of, 17.

  Forced labor, 337.

  Foreign Goods, trade in, 24, 387, 391, 395, 464.

  Foreign liquors, love of, 91;
    Office, the, 381.

  Forest wealth, 17.

  Formosa, transfer of, 269.

  Fortress, an ancient, 105.

  “Four Sages,” Hall of the, 136.

  Fox, Mr., 37, 39.

  French clocks, rage for at Yö Ju, 90, 91.

  Frescoes, curious, 60, 319.

  Friendly character of people, 80.

  “Frog-boxes,” 408.

  Funerals, observances at, 62, 286.

  Fusan, 20, 23, 24, 25;
    its Japanese character, 26;
    markets of, 28;
    Europeans in, 178;
    Japanese soldiers in, 245, 454;
    population of, 469.


  Gale, Mr., 167, 173;
    Mrs., 173.

  Game, 174.

  Gap Pass, the, 36, 181.

  Gardner, Mr. (acting consul), 35, 183;
    Mrs. and Miss, 37.

  Gautama, a shrine of, 137.

  Geographical position determines Korea’s political relationships, 452.

  Geology and the geological formation, 15.

  Gesang, The, (singing and dancing girls) of Phyöng-yang, 352, 353.

  Ginseng, “the elixir of life,” 296;
    extent of its cultivation, 297;
    preparation for market, 298.

  Girl-babies, not specially welcome in a family, 300, 341.

  Girls, seclusion of, 119.

  Godobin, Fort, 214.

  God of War, temple to the, 319.

  Gold-digging, 108, 322, 324.

  Gold dust exports, 108.

  “Golden Sand,” the river of, 80.

  Gold ornaments, 108.

  Gorge, a grand, 95.

  Government departments (Korean) reorganized, 381.

  _Government Gazette_, the, 373, 374, 377.

  “Government Hospital,” the, 64.

  “Great Fifteenth Day,” the, 266.

  Greathouse, General, 76.

  Greathouse, Mr., 441.

  Greek Church in Siberia, 229;
    its Litany, 231.


  Ha-chin, its ugly women, 97.

  Ha Ch’i style of music, 166.

  Ha-in class, the, 448.

  Hair-cropping edict, 359, 363.

  “Halfway Place,” the, 91.

  “Hall of the Four Sages,” 136.

  Ham-gyöng Do, 219, 223, 233.

  Ham-gyöng Province, 156, 163.

  Hanka Lake, 242, 244.

  Han Kang, village of, 68, 70, 76.

  Han River, 35, 36, 40, 68, 71, 74, 75, 77, 80, 85, 92, 99, 103,
      106, 110;
    a cheap and convenient highway, 111;
    descent of the, 105;
    fauna and flora of, 71, 72, 98;
    rapids of, 75, 92, 93, 101, 102, 105, 110, 111;
    scenery around the, 71.

  Han valley, inhabitants of the, 76, 78-79;
    cultivation of the, 100;
    limestone cliffs of the, 104;
    schools in the, 79;
    temperature of the, 81.

  Harbors of Fusan and Wön-San, 14, 30.

  Hart, Sir Robert, 213.

  Hats, monstrous, 345.

  Heidemann, Mr., 223, 228, 231.

  Hemp cultivation, 95.

  Hermit City, the, 37.

  “Hermit Nation,” the, opened by the treaties of 1883, 11.

  Hillier, Mr., 183, 246, 251, 259, 269, 281, 283.

  Hills, denudation of, 17.

  “Hill Towns,” the, 308.

  Hiroshima, trial of assassins at, 277.

  Hoa-chung, 151, 152.

  Hoang-chyöng San, 153.

  Home Office, the, 381.

  Homesteads of the Han Valley, 79.

  Hong, Colonel, 271, 272, 274.

  Hon-jö, 293.

  Ho pai, or divining table, the, 408.

  Hospitals supported and conducted by the Missions, 33.

  Household spirits, 418.

  Hulbert, Rev. H. B., 164, 165, 166, 391.

  Hu-nan Chang, 94.

  Hun-chun, 228, 230, 237;
    Chinese at, 237, 238.

  Hun-ho river, the, 199.

  Hunt, Mr., 25, 458.

  Hwang-hai Do, 16.

  Hwang-hai Province, 303.

  Hyön, Colonel, 272.


  Idleness of the nobles at Seoul, 46

  Im, accident to my servant, 331.

  Images, stone, 170, 171.

  Im-jin, 292.

  Im-jin Gang, the, 292.

  Immorality, 341.

  Import trade, value of, 393.

  Incantations, 425.

  Independence Arch, the, 439.

  Independence of Korea assured by the Japanese, 247;
    opposed by the native officials, 262.

  Independence, proclamation of, 247.

  _Independent_ newspaper, the, 439, 440.

  Industries, 26.

  Inns, regular and irregular, 124, 125, 157, 294, 326.

  Inouye, Count, 247, 251, 261, 262, 268, 270, 274, 280.

  Inscription, an amusing, 101.

  Interior of the country, efforts to reach, 49, 66.

  Interrupted Shadow, Island of the, 23.

  Inundation in Manchuria, 195.

  Isolation maintained up to 1876, 19.

  Itai, the innkeeper, 31, 245.

  Itinerary of travel, 357, 358.


  Jaisohn, Dr., 129, 389, 439.

  Japanese, designs of in Korea, 181, 206;
    lacking in tact, 263, 453;
    in Korea, 26;
    their settlement in Chemulpo, 31;
    hatred of the Koreans towards, 31, 344;
    shipping and commerce of, 32;
    control rice trade of Chemulpo, 32;
    the Legation and colony at Seoul, 43;
    Japs in Wön-San, 176;
    prestige, a blow to, 278.

  Japan, last glimpse of, 23;
    sea of, 14, 30, 74, 103, 145, 149;
    outwits China in Korea, 182.

  Jones, Mr. Heber, 341, 400, 415, 418.

  “Judgment, Temple of,” 139.

  Junks, Korean, 174.

  Justice, the Ministry of, 383.


  Ka-chang, 322, 323.

  Kai Chhön, 355.

  Kai-Söng (Song-do), 293.

  Kal-rön-gi, 150.

  Kang-ge Mountains, 297.

  Kang, the, 197, 204.

  Kang-wön Do, the, 14.

  Kang-wön Province, 156.

  _Kanjo Shimbo_ newspaper, the, 440.

  Ka-phyöng, 109, 112.

  Keum-Kang San Mountains, the, 107, 129, 133, 140, 141, 146,
      149, 150;
    Monasteries of, 134, 141.

  Keum-San Gang river, 129.

  Keum-San goldfields, 323, 355.

  Khabaroffka, 242, 244;
    Korean settlers near, 225, 233.

  Khordadbeh, the Arab, his “Book of Roads and Provinces,” 12.

  Ki-cho, the, 138, 141, 149.

  Ki-jun, 355.

  Kimchi, 89, 153, 154.

  Kim Ok-yun, murderer of, 432.

  Kim, the boatman, 70, 82, 85, 92, 101-102, 107.

  King Li Hsi and the _Kur-dong_ at Seoul, 58;
    audience with, appearance and character of, 252, 253,
      256-260, 268, 428;
    practically a prisoner, 362;
    escapes to the Russian Legation, 365, 430;
    issues proclamation respecting hair-cropping, 363;
    power of the, 371, 375, 378.

  King’s oath, the Korean, 249.

  Kings, palace of the, 295.

  Kit-ze introduces the elements of Chinese civilization in the
      12th century, 12, 355;
    his tomb and temple, 318, 319.

  Kobe, 175.

  Kol-lip dæmon, 421.

  Ko-mop-so river, the, 323.

  Ko-moun Tari, 310.

  Komura, Mr., 278, 281.

  Kong-Wön Do, 74, 155.

  Kong-Wön, 107.

  Korea, its geographical position, 11, 14;
    the church of, 11;
    opened first by the treaties, 11;
    population, 13;
    rivers, lakes, and harbors, 14;
    volcanoes, 14;
    geology, 15;
    mountains, 15;
    climate, 16;
    fauna, 16;
    forest wealth, 17;
    flora, 17;
    minerals, 17;
    rulers of, 18;
    cabinet ministers, 18;
    army, 19;
    provinces of, 19;
    the revenue and its sources, 19;
    treaties with, 19;
    the coinage, 19, 20;
    treaty ports, 20;
    language, 20, 21;
    religion, 21, 64, 399;
    society, 22;
    neighbors of, 23;
    foreign women in, 28;
    rebellion in Southern, 179;
    Japanese proposals for its administration, 206;
    the King’s oath, 249;
    dynasty of, worn out, 255;
    a dark chapter in its history, 271;
    last words on, 445;
    her resources, 445;
    class privileges in, 101, 446, 450;
    dissatisfaction in, 281;
    farmers in, 447, 450;
    Japanese influence in, 25, 31, 359, 431, 449, 452;
    law, administration of in, 441;
    markets in, 28;
    missionary methods in, 28-30, 64;
    money of, 66, 67, 78;
    provincial government of, 372, 378;
    roads in, 20, 128;
    security in, 295;
    trade in, 24, 32, 304, 307, 391;
    winter in, 36.

  Korean animals, 73;
    bulls, 36, 110, 162;
    customs, 59, 65, 78, 101, 114, 120, 127, 283, 355, 359;
    dogs, 47, 73;
    dwellings, 77;
    education, 142, 387;
    finance, 396;
    graves, 36, 61;
    inns, 124-128;
    nobles and officials, 46;
    pigs, 73, 162, 322;
    ponies, 36, 54, 121, 162;
    roads, 20, 128;
    sheep, 72, 163;
    soldiers, 56, 209;
    streets, 27;
    travellers, 127;
    villages, 77, 162, 225, 234.

  _Korean Christian Advocate, and Christian News_, the, 440.

  _Korean Repository_, the, 11, 168, 346, 352, 440.

  Koreans, the, traces of Manchurian conquest on, 12;
    uniformity of their costume, 12;
    physiognomy of, 12;
    a handsome race, 12;
    height of, 13;
    mental calibre of, 13;
    possess Oriental vices, 13;
    seclusion and inferior position of women, 13, 45, 339-343;
    their corruption and brutal methods of punishment, 33;
    squalid character of ordinary Korean life, 52, 330;
    encumbered with debt, 78;
    a drunken people, 92;
    voracity and omnivorous character, 154;
    their music, 164;
    settlers in Siberia, 223;
    attach themselves to the Greek Church, 229;
    under Muscovite government, 233;
    race improved by settlement in Siberia, 236, 336;
    independence of secured by Japanese, 247.

  _Kowshing_, the transport, 207.

  Ko-yang, 285, 286.

  Krasnoye Celo, 230, 233, 234.

  Ku-mu-nio, 110.

  Kun-ren-tai, the palace guard, 270, 271, 272, 275, 278, 280,
      281, 282, 362;
    abolition of the, 386.

  Kuntz and Albers, Messrs., 216, 220, 224, 239.

  Kur-dong, the, a unique but
  now rare ceremonial, 51, 60, 61, 119, 247.

  K’wan, 233.

  Kwan-ja, the, (official passport), 86, 87, 128, 146, 159, 283.

  Kwan-yin, 143;
    image of, 137.

  Kwass, 231.

  Kyei, or associations, 440.

  Kyeng-pok Palace, 251, 256, 365, 369, 433, 437.

  Kyeng-wun Palace, the, 369, 398, 428, 429, 437.

  Kyöng-heung, 227.

  Kyöng-hwi Province, 303.

  Kyöng-kwi Do, 75.

  Kyöng-ku-kyöng, 141, 146.

  Kyöng-sang Province, 25, 30.

  Kyöng-wön Do, 75.


  Lakes, 14.

  Landis, Dr., 400, 415, 421.

  Language of the Koreans, 20, 173.

  Laundresses, 45, 339.

  Lava fields, 16, 131.

  Law, its administration infamous, 441.

  Liau river, the, 186, 193, 199.

  Li Hsi, the King, royal procession of at Seoul, 55;
    in seclusion at outbreak of war, 183.

  Li Hung Chang, 267.

  Lindholm, Mr., 241.

  Lion Stone, the, 145.

  Liquor drinking, 91.

  Litany, a Greek, 231.

  Literary swells, 104, 339.

  Literature, the Temple of, 382.

  Lone Tree Hill, the, 45.

  Long-shin dæmons, 417.

  Lotus dance, the, 352.

  Lucifer matches, 168.

  Lynch law, amateur, 104.


  Macdonald, Sir Claude, 430.

  Ma-cha Töng lake, 156, 158.

  Ma-chai, 85, 106, 111.

  Magistrate, an interview with a, 86.

  Ma-ha-ly-an Sa monastery, 143.

  Mak-pai Pass, the, 150.

  Ma-kyo, 106.

  Mama, or the smallpox dæmon, 413, 414

  Manchu head-dress, 200;
    soldiers, 208, 210.

  Manchu race, the, 190.

  Manchuria, brigands in, 188;
    Chinese immigrants to, 188;
    Government of, 201;
    immigrations from, 12;
    population of, 187;
    trade of, 189;
    viceroyalty of, 187, 191;
    authoress departs to, 186;
    sojourn at viceroyalty of, 187;
    a deluge in, 193;
    old capital of, 201;
    practice of medicine in, 203;
    less hostile to foreigners, 207;
    visit to Russian, 223.

  Mandarins and their retainers, 329.

  Mang-kun, the, 114, 360.

  Man-pok-Tong, the, 145;
    fear of tigers, 132, 292, 302, 325;
    superstition of, 129.

  Manufactures, 18.

  Ma-pu, 35, 40, 68, 181.

  Mapus, or grooms, 121-132, 164, 284, 285, 293, 302.

  Marble pagoda of Seoul, the, 43.

  Ma-ri Kei, 132.

  Market, a Korean, 28, 306, 307.

  Marriage customs, 114, 342.

  Marriage, early, prohibited, 385.

  Matunin, Mr., 227.

  Meals, 79;
    by the way, 82, 83.

  Medicine, practice of in Manchuria, 203;
    medical missions in Korea, 424.

  Mesozoic and metamorphic rocks. (See Geology.)

  Miller, Mr., a young missionary fellow-traveller, 66, 70, 83, 87,
      104, 105, 142, 151, 159.

  Mineral wealth of, 17, 18, 25, 108.

  Missionaries and the Missions, 20, 21, 29, 30, 63, 64, 65, 172, 198,
      201, 346, 390;
    statistics of Missions, 462, 463.

  Monarchy, character of the, 18.

  Monasteries, Diamond Mountain, 133.

  Monastery of Sök-Wang Sa, 169.

  Mongolian eye, obliquity of in the Koreans, 12.

  Millet, the use of, 321.

  Min clan, the, 261.

  Ming tombs, the, 201.

  Ministers, execution of, 367;
    of State, duties of, 379.

  “Ministres de Parade,” 201.

  Min Yeng-chyun, 371.

  Miriang, 25.

  Mirioks, 76, 111, 286.

  Miriok Yang Pass, 321.

  Missionary work, 22, 29, 30, 63-65, 172, 201, 207, 227, 346;
    statistics of, 462.

  Mission Hospital, a fine, 202;
    service, a, 350.

  Miura, General Viscount, 269, 270, 275, 277, 453, 455.

  Moffet, Mr., 76, 312, 313, 316, 320, 347.

  Mok-po, 458.

  Mok-po river, 14, 19.

  Money, 66, 78.

  Monks, 133-149;
    ignorant and superstitious, 142.

  Monuments, 294.

  Mou-chin Tai, 328, 336, 338.

  Mounds, used for interment of the living, 175.

  Mountainous character of the country, 15;
    of Seoul, 45.

  Mourning costume, 63.

  Mukden, anti-foreign feeling in, 208, 211;
    cabs of, 199;
    mission hospital, 202;
    pawnshops, 205;
    suicides in, 205;
    system of medicine, 203;
    trade of, 200, 211;
    city of, 192, 199, 200;
    its successful missions, 201, 202, 208.

  Mulberry gardens of Seoul, 43.

  Mulberry palace of Seoul, 45, 247, 416.

  Music, discordant character of the native, 164, 165;
    vocal, 166.

  Murata rifle, the, 209.

  Mu-tang, belief in, 422-426.

  Mu-tang sorcerers, 114, 129, 164, 287, 290, 312, 335, 351, 400, 408;
    as oracles, 412;
    rites of, 413;
    marriage with, 425.

  Myo-kil Sang, the, 145.


  Nagasaki, Chinese town of, 23, 213, 269.

  Nai Kak, the, 377.

  Nak-tong, 64.

  Nak-Tong river, 14, 25.

  Nam Chhon valley and river, 308, 309.

  Nam Han fortress, 83, 84, 105, 181.

  Nam-San, 45, 68, 163, 169;
    fortress, 105.

  Nam San mountains, 39, 43, 45, 68, 97.

  Nang-chön, 106, 110, 112.

  _Naniwa_, the cruiser, 207.

  National life of Korea exists only at Seoul, 59.

  Newchwang, city of, 175, 186, 187, 191, 192, 212, 355;
    port of, 189.

  Newspapers issued at Seoul, 440.

  Nicolaeffk, 219.

  Night, a hideously memorable, 157.

  Nikolskoye, military station of, 240, 241;
    Korean settlements near, 233.

  “Ninety-nine Turns,” pass of the, 152.

  Nippon Yusen Kaisha, steamers of, 175, 181.

  Nobles, their idleness, 46;
    a privileged class, 101;
    exactions of, 102.

  North branch of the Han, voyage on, 106.

  Northward ho! 320.

  Nowo Kiewsk, Russian military post, 224, 225, 234, 238.

  Nuns, 141.


  O-bang-chang-kun dæmons, 415.

  O’Conor, Lady, 186.

  Officials, superbly dressed, 46, 54;
    resent the new régime inaugurated by the Japanese, 262;
    considered as vampires in Korea, 303, 370, 372;
    memorabilia governing, 379;
    corruption of, 397, 431.

  O-hung-suk Ju, 301.

  Oiesen, Mr., 158, 458.

  Oil paper used as mats, 323.

  Okamoto, Mr., 271, 277.

  Omnivorous Koreans, 154.

  Op Ju dæmon, 420.

  Oracles, 412.

  Orange peel, use of, 92.

  Oricol, 246.

  Osaka, 267.

  Osborne, Mr., 458.

  Oshima, General, 318.

  Otori, Mr., 44, 183, 269, 373, 374, 455.

  Ou-chin-gang, 344.

  Outfit, 67.


  Pagoda, a ruinous, 91.

  Pai Chai College, 388.

  Paik-kui Mi, 102, 113, 114.

  Paik-tu San Mountain, 14, 15, 334.

  Paik-Yang Kang River, The, 130, 131.

  Pai-low, the 439.

  Pa Ju, 285, 292.

  Pa-ka Mi, 101, 102.

  Pak-su Mu, the, 409.

  Pak-Yöng-Ho, the Minister, 247.

  Palace department, the, 385.

  P’al-kyöng, 155.

  Pa-mul dæmon, 420.

  Pangas, 123, 162.

  Pang-wha San, 97.

  Pan-pyöng, 130.

  Pan-su, the, 402, 424.

  Paper manufacture, 306, 323.

  Passenger cart, a Chinese, 197.

  Pawnshops of Mukden, 205.

  “Pea-boats,” 187, 192.

  Peasants’ houses, 77.

  Peasant farmer, the, 78, 305.

  Pechili, Gulf of, 184, 213.

  Pedlars, Korean, 75, 306.

  Peiho river, 186.

  Peking, European exodus from, 213.

  Peking Pass, the, 43, 437, 439.

  Peninsula of Korea, its geographical location, 13.

  People, the, oppressed by taxation, 102.

  Phallic symbols, 111.

  Phyöng-an Do, 321;
    goldfields, 108, 322.

  Phyöng Kang goldfields, 108.

  Phöng-yang, 280, 293, 305, 308, 310, 312-319, 328, 330;
    occupation by the Japanese, 313;
    battle of, 209, 261, 317;
    size of, 356;
    coal mines of, 315;
    dancing and singing girls at, 352;
    first view of, 310;
    Japanese soldiers for, 245, 285;
    mission work at, 346, 350;
    toy shops in, 168.

  Physical appearance and height of the Koreans, 13, 26.

  Physiognomical features of the Koreans, 12.

  Pigs, 73, 162, 322.

  Pirates, attacked by, 212.

  Police, 434, 441.

  Political relationships, 452.

  Pong-san, 304.

  Ponies, 32, 36, 54, 121, 122, 162.

  Pöp-heung, king, 135.

  Population, 13, 76.

  Port Lazareff, 174.

  Port Shestakoff, 174, 219.

  Po-san, 345, 355.

  Posango, 75.

  Possiet Bay, 224, 228, 233.

  Potato cultivation, 229, 333.

  Po-tok-am shrine, 143.

  Potong Mön, 315, 317.

  Potters at work, 85.

  Pottery, native, 307.

  Prefectural towns on the Han, 110, 112.

  Primorsk, 220, 223, 233, 236, 241.

  Princess’ Tomb, the, 62.

  Prisons, Eastern, experience of, 442.

  Procession, a quaint and motley one at Seoul, 56.

  Protestant churches in Seoul, 63, 65.

  Provincial Government, 372, 378.

  Puk-han fortress, 105.

  Puk-han mountains, 39, 247, 284.

  Punishment, brutal character of, among Koreans, 33;
    abolished by the Japanese, 263.

  Purification, the rite of, 411.

  Putiata, Colonel, 433.

  Pyeng-San, 308.

  Pyök-chol, temple of, 84.

  P’yo-un Sa monastery, 138, 139, 143, 144.


  Queen of Korea, audience with, 251;
    description of, 252;
    dress of, 259;
    assassination of, 271, 273, 455;
    removal of the remains of, 369, 428.


  Rainfall, 161, 191.

  Rapids of the Han, 92, 101, 105.

  Rebellion in Southern Korea, 179.

  “Red Door,” distinction of the, 299.

  Reforms in Korea pressed by the Japanese, 257;
    partial acceptance of, 386, 448, 452.

  Religion, no national, 21, 63, 399.

  Religious shrines, 76.

  Reorganized Korean government, 371.

  Revenue, the, and its sources, 19.

  Revolutions, frequency of, 447.

  Rice cultivation, 155, 161.

  Rice trade of Chemulpo in Japanese hands, 32, 33.

  Rice wine partaken to excess, 91, 92.

  Richofen, Baron, his work on China, 12.

  Ride, a long, hot, 156.

  Riong San, 270, 271, 390.

  Ritual of invocation, etc., 411.

  Rivers, lakes and harbors of Korea, 14, 25.

  Roads, bad character of, 20, 123, 128.

  Roman Church and Missions in Seoul, 64, 65.

  Ross, Dr. and Mrs., 198, 202, 211.

  Royal city, a, 292.

  Royal Edict, a fraudulent, 276;
    later edicts, 281, 366, 451.

  Royal examinations, abolition of, 388;
    Library, the, 256.

  Royal tombs of Seoul, 62.

  Royalty, an audience with, 245.

  Rulers of Korea, 18.

  Russian homes, 235;
    administration, 236;
    legation at Seoul, 431.

  Russian intervention, 281;
    Manchuria, 223, 243;
    soldier, the, 218.

  Russia’s “New Empire” and maritime province, 242, 243;
    ascendancy of, 430;
    her gains in Korea, 455;
    her ascendancy lost, 456.

  Russo-Chinese frontier, 230;
    Japanese Treaty, 471;
    Korean frontier, 230;
    Korean settlements, 225, 226, 229;
    hospitality of, 235.

  Ryeng-an Sa, temple, of, 84.


  Sabatin, Mr., 271, 272, 277.

  Saddle, twelve hours in the, 325.

  Sagem dæmons, 416.

  Saghalien, 220.

  Sai-kal-chai, the, 150.

  Sai-nam, gateway at, 308.

  Sajorni, 231.

  Sakyamuni, image of, 136.

  Salt industry, the, 158, 228.

  Sampans, 70, 75.

  Sa-mun, 25.

  San Chin-chöi Sök dæmon, 420.

  Sang-chin, 25.

  Sang-dan San, 294.

  Sang-nang Dang, 129.

  Sanitary regulations, 436.

  San-kak-San mountain, 38.

  San-Shin Ryöng dæmons, 416.

  Saretchje, 229.

  Sar-pang Kori, 123, 126, 129.

  Satow, Sir E., 68.

  Scotch missionaries, 201, 207.

  Scranton, Dr., 350.

  Sea of Japan, 74.

  Seoul-Fusan railway, projected, 25.

  Seoul, port of, 14, 19;
    the capital, 35;
    mode of transit and approach to, 36;
    mean architecture of, 37;
    population and fine situation of, 38;
    beautiful and safe environs of, 39;
    foulness of the intra-mural city, 40;
    later sanitary improvements in, 40;
    the shops and their wares, 41;
    the great civic bronze bell, 41, 42, 51;
    beauty of the ancient Marble Pagoda, 43;
    its hordes of mangy dogs, 47;
    women of, free to take exercise in the streets only after
      nightfall, 47;
    the _Kur-dong_ festival, 51;
    seat of government and centre of official life, 59;
    graves of the capital, 61;
    royal tombs of, 62;
    the Missions and Protestant Churches, 63;
    authoress’s sojourn in, 246;
    leaves it, 267;
    assassination of the Queen at, 273;
    mission and foreign schools in, 390;
    dæmon festivals at, 411;
    the city in 1897, 427;
    metamorphosis of, 435;
    newspapers of, 439, 440;
    banking facilities in, 20, 32;
    beacon-fire in, 97;
    Board of Rites at, 141;
    burial clubs in, 62;
    Chinese colony in, 44;
    climate of, 16;
    education in, 387, 390;
    environs of, 68;
    first impressions of, 35, 48;
    fortresses of, 84;
    gates of, 39;
    houses of, 40, 436;
    Japanese ascendency in, 247, 261;
    Japanese colony in, 45;
    lava fields near, 16;
    marble pagoda in, 43, 84;
    missionaries in, 64;
    Mulberry Palace, 43;
    New Year’s Day in, 264;
    occupation of, by Japan, 206;
    police of, 434, 441;
    political conditions in, 261, 268;
    Prefecture of, 372;
    sanitary regulations in, 436;
    shops in, 41, 59, 168;
    singing and dancing girls at, 352;
    streets of, 435, 436;
    trade of, 60, 75;
    to Wön-san, road from, 129;
    walls of, 39.

  Settlements, 223, 238.

  Seun-tjeung-pi, or monuments, 294.

  Seven Star Gate, the, 315.

  Shamanism, 21, 63, 401, 402.

  Shamans, 401.

  Shanghai, 175.

  Shan-tung, 188, 220.

  Sheep, 72, 163.

  Shen-si, 188.

  Shestakoff, Port, 174, 218.

  Shimonoseki, treaty of, 269.

  Shin-Chang, or dæmon generals, 415.

  Shipping vessels entering Korean ports, return of, 468.

  Shou-yang-yi, 321.

  Sho-wa Ku, 194, 195.

  Shrines, 77, 129, 133, 149, 333.

  Shur-hung, 303, 415-418.

  Sian-chöng, 322.

  Siao-ho river, 199.

  Siberia, Korean settlers in, 223, 234;
    “cussedness” of Siberian ponies, 232.

  Si-jo style of music, 165.

  Sill, Mr., 269, 281.

  Simpson, Mr. J. Y., 244.

  Sin-gang Kam, 109.

  Sin Ki Sun, 438.

  Sin-kyei Sa monastery, 149.

  Siphun river, 241.

  Siptai-wong, the, or “Ten Judges,” 288.

  “Six Great Roads,” the, 128.

  Slavery abolished, 385.

  Smith, Mr. Charles, 217.

  Social position of women, 338.

  _Société des Missions Etrangères_, 389.

  So-il, 95.

  Sök-wang Sa monastery, 169, 170.

  Soldier, the Korean, 56, 434;
    the Chinese, 209;
    the Russian, 218.

  Sol-rak San mountain, 100.

  Song-do, visit to the city of, 293.

  Song, examples of native, 166.

  Söng Ju dæmon, 418.

  Söng Whoang Dan altar, 417, 418.

  Sön-tong, 141.

  Sorcerers and geomancers, 403.

  _Sorning_ (sponging) on relations, 446, 447.

  Spanish chestnuts, groves of, 108.

  Spasskoje, 242.

  Spinsterhood, 115.

  Spirits, evil, classified, 421, 422.

  Spirit shrine, a, 129, 133.

  Spirit worship, 22, 63, 95, 96.

  “Star Board,” the, 287.

  St. Peter, Sisters of, 64.

  St. Peter the Great, Gulf of, 220.

  Straw fringes, use of, 299.

  Streets, 27, 435.

  Stripling, Mr. A. B., 441.

  Su-chung Dai, 155.

  Sugimura, Mr., 275, 277.

  Suicide, prevalence of in Mukden, 205.

  Sun-chhön, 338.

  Sungacha river, 244.

  _Suruga Maru_, the s. s., 269.

  _Swallow King’s Rewards, The_, 354.

  Swings, 164.

  Sword and Dragon Dance, the, 353.

  Syo-im, 159.


  Tablets, stone, 103.

  Tai-döng river, 14, 17, 108, 308, 310, 314, 315, 322, 324, 327, 330,
    335, 338, 344, 355.

  Taiping rebellion, 188.

  Tai-won-Kun, the, 37, 207, 255, 256, 262, 269, 271, 274, 275,
    362, 437.

  Taku forts, the, 186.

  Tanning industry, the, 441.

  Tan-pa-Ryöng Pass, the, 132, 133, 134.

  Tan-yang, 75, 90, 94, 97, 98, 106.

  Tao-jol, the, 303.

  Ta-rai, 111.

  Tarantass (Russian vehicle), the, 225, 226, 228.

  Ta-ri-mak, 163, 168.

  Taxation, burden of, 102, 384.

  Tchyu-Chichang Pass, 152.

  Temperature, high, 157, 159, 160, 172, 191, 193;
    low, 204, 246, 302.

  Temple, interior of a, 87.

  Temple of the God of War, 60.

  “Temple of the Ten Judges,” 136.

  Temples, 84, 133, 149, 170, 295, 303.

  “Ten Judges,” the, 288.

  Thong-chhön, 155.

  “Throwing the ball,” 353.

  Tientsin, 175;
    treaty of, 206.

  Tiger-hunters, 73, 127, 150.

  Tigers, Korean and Manchurian, 73;
    the hunting of, 73, 150;
    dread of, 127;
    “tiger on the brain,” 132.

  Ti Ju dæmon, 419, 420.

  Tok Chhön, 323, 325, 327, 328;
    squalor of dwellings at, 329, 333, 345.

  Tol Maru, 302.

  Tomak-na-dali, 85.

  Tombs, 77.

  Tong-haks, the, 29, 80, 177, 180, 181, 206, 264, 370.

  Tong-ku, 131.

  Top knot, the, 359, 360, 361, 362;
    proclamation regarding, 366.

  Tornado, a, 130.

  To-tam, 99, 100, 101.

  To-ti-chi Shin dæmons, 418.

  Toys, 168.

  Trade, 24, 25, 31, 32, 304, 308, 391, 396, 450;
    statistics, 462, 466;
    foreign, extent of, 391, 392, 464.

  Tragedy, a palace, 273.

  Trans-Siberian railroad, 174;
    trip over eastern section of, 239;
    construction of, 244.

  Transition stage, a, in Korean annals, 261.

  Travellers, 127.

  Travelling, arrangements for, 67, 70.

  Treasury department at Seoul, 381;
    cleansing of, 449.

  Treaties with foreign countries, 19, 471, 473.

  Treaty ports, 20, 32, 357, 458;
    population of, 469, 470.

  Treaty powers, the, 207.

  Troops (Chinese) on march, 206.

  Tso, General, 203, 210, 215, 315, 320;
    death of, 316.

  Tsushima, island of, 23.

  Tu-men river, 14, 17, 223, 228, 230, 231, 233, 242.

  “Twelve Thousand Peaks,” beauty of the, 138.

  Tyzen Ho river, 233.


  Underwood, Mrs., 251, 252, 254, 279.

  Un-san, 322.

  Unterberger, General, 217.

  Upper classes, inactivity of, 446.

  Ur-röp-so, 108.

  Ussuri, 239, 240.

  Ussuri railway, 239, 240.

  Ut-Kiri, 107, 110.


  Vermin, protection against, 292.

  Vernacular schools, Government, 388.

  Victoria, Queen, referred to by Queen of Korea, 259.

  Victory, cost of, 267.

  Villages, 77, 162, 225, 226, 229, 234;
    dirty and squalid, 130.

  Village system, the, 383;
    council of, 384.

  Vladivostok (_See_ Wladivostok).

  Vocal music, native, 166.

  Volcanic action, signs of, 14, 16.

  “Volunteer Fleet,” the Russian, 218, 239.

  Voracity of the Koreans, 154.

  Voyage up the Han, A, 82;
    its drawbacks, 105.


  Waeber, Mr., 183, 368, 431;
    Mme., 280.

  “Walking the Bridges,” custom of, 266.

  War, impending, 177.

  War declared, 208, 454;
    disarranges ocean transit, 213;
    enthusiasm for, 214;
    reforms induced by, 268.

  Warner, Mr., 68.

  War Office, 382.

  Waters, Colonel, 244.

  Wei-hai-wei, fall of, 267.

  Wei-man, 355.

  Western China, visit to, 282, 284;
    equipment for, 284.

  Whang Hai coast, the, 357.

  Whang Ju, 308-310.

  “White-headed Mountain,” 14.

  Widows, remarriage of, 291, 385.

  Wife, the duty of a, 118.

  Wildfowl, 174.

  Wilkinson, Mr., 31.

  Witch doctors, 203.

  Wladivostok, 24, 25, 175, 213-222, 223, 224, 239, 240, 241;
    great progress of, 219;
    its militarism, 221;
    Chinese shops in, 220;
    climate of, 222;
    Korean settlements near, 233;
    population of, 219;
    public buildings in, 220;
    visit of the Tsar to, 239.

  Wol-po, 323.

  Women of Korea, seclusion and inferior position of, 13, 119;
    “slaves to the laundry” at Seoul, 45;
    Seoul women permitted to take exercise in the streets only after
      nightfall, 47;
    curious to see and inspect the garb of foreign women, 88, 94, 127;
    subjection of as a wife, 118;
    social position of, 338, 339;
    peasant women, 340.

  Won-chön, 110.

  Wong, “my servant,” 66, 69, 92, 110, 125, 127, 164, 193, 197.

  Won Ju, 90, 94.

  Wön-San, 14, 19, 20, 73, 109, 112, 123, 150, 158, 160, 163, 169, 170,
      173-178, 184, 245, 328, 395;
    population of, 176, 470;
    Japanese troops pass through, 245.

  Wön-sang, trade of, 176.

  Wyers, Mr., 69, 70.

  Wylie, Mr., murder of, 208, 211.


  Yalu river, the, 14.

  Yamen, a, 86, 93, 104, 112, 163, 262, 303, 338;
    runners, 51, 57, 86, 336, 338, 339.

  Yang-bans, 59, 77-79, 87, 101, 102, 114, 116, 127, 235, 322, 338,
    448, 450.

  Yang-kun, 83.

  Yangtze rapids, the, 106.

  Yang-wöl, 103.

  Yantchihe, 226, 227.

  Ye Cha Yun, 427, 435.

  Yellow Sea, the, 14, 30.

  Yen, the Japanese, 305.

  Yi family, dæmon of the, 425.

  Yi, General, 206.

  Yi Hak In, Mr., 283, 284, 292, 294, 298, 302, 304, 308, 312, 318,
    320, 324, 326, 331, 334, 354, 356.

  Yi Kyöng-jik, 273.

  Ying-tzü, 186.

  Yö Ju, town of, 86, 87;
    authoress an object of curiosity at, 89.

  Yöng-Chhun, 75, 76, 102, 103, 104, 106;
    rapids of, 105.

  Yong-Wöl, 78.

  Yön-yung Pa-da, 357.

  Yuan, Mr., 44, 183;
    big bell at, 147.

  Yu-chöm Sa Monastery, the, 138, 142, 143, 146, 147.

  Yul-sa, the monk, 135.

  Yung-hing, 173.

  Yung-wön, 328.




Transcriber’s Note:

Minor errors and omissions in punctuation have been fixed. Inconsistent
hyphenation has been standardized. Spellings have been left as in the
original text unless listed below. Smallcaps have been made ALL CAPS in
the text version.

Page 8 (Table of Contents): The title of Appendix B was changed from
“Direct Foreign Trade of Korea 1896-95” to “Direct Foreign Trade of
Korea 1886-95”.

Page 8 (Table of Contents): The title of Appendix C was changed from
“Direct Foreign Trade of Korea 1806-95” to “Direct Foreign Trade of
Korea 1896-95”.

Page 12: “Legends of the aborginal” changed to “Legends of the
aboriginal”.

Page 17: “_Ampelopsis Veitchi_” changed to “_Ampelopsis Veitchii_”.

Page 55: “in the full spendor” changed to “in the full splendor”.

Page 73: “tigers had carried of” changed to “tigers had carried off”.

Page 85: “a hugh concrete double coffin” changed to “a huge concrete
double coffin”.

Page 108: “not far from the Tai-dong” changed to “not far from the
Tai-döng”.

Page 127: “_ku-kyong_ or sightseeing” changed to “_ku-kyöng_ or
sightseeing”.

Page 127: “necessity compells nocturnal” changed to “necessity compels
nocturnal”.

Page 137: “A 9 P.M.” changed to “At 9 P.M.”.

Page 149: “Chinese sweatmeat” changed to “Chinese sweetmeat”.

Page 153: “pounded capscicum” changed to “pounded capsicum”.

Page 188: “I was in Mudken” changed to “I was in Mukden”

Page 190: “are taller, comlier,” changed to “are taller, comelier,”.

Page 208: “othern northern cities” changed to “other northern cities”.

Page 236: “repacious attentions of officials” changed to “rapacious
attentions of officials”.

Page 245: “_viâ_ Nagaski” changed to “_viâ_ Nagasaki”.

Page 247: “procession or a few trim” changed to “procession of a few
trim”.

Page 281: “his profound satisfac-” changed to “his profound
satisfaction”.

Page 288: “sign of gook luck” changed to “sign of good luck”.

Page 322: “a local migistrate” changed to “a local magistrate”.

Page 333: “thre are some” changed to “there are some”.

Page 342: “selects the cuncubine” changed to “selects the concubine”.

Page 362: “the Cabinent were divested” changed to “the Cabinet were
divested”.

Page 370: “members was substitued for” changed to “members was
substituted for”.

Page 409: “in fact her _döppel ganger_” changed to “in fact her
_doppelgänger_”.

Page 418: “shrine is which” changed to “shrine in which”.

Page 424: “malignant of the dæmon hierachy” changed to “malignant of
the dæmon hierarchy”.

Page 430: “_entour ge_ of an Eastern Sovereign” changed to “_entourage_
of an Eastern Sovereign”.

Page 476: “Chöl-yong-To” in the index changed to “Chŏl-yong-To”.

Page 482: “Mu-tang sorcerors” in the index changed to “Mu-tang
sorcerers”.

Page 483: “Oieson, Mr.” in the index changed to “Oiesen, Mr.”.

Page 483: “Pedlers, Korean” in the index changed to “Pedlars, Korean”.

Page 486: “Tarantass (Russian ehicle)” in the index changed to
“Tarantass (Russian vehicle)”.

Page 488: “Yo Ju, town of” in the index changed to “Yö Ju, town of”.