Isabella L. Bird

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 unbearable 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”