“ After crossing a low but severe pass, we came down upon a large affluent of the Tai-dong, which for want of a name I designate as the Ko-mop-so, flowing as a full- watered, green stream be- tween lofty cliffs of much caverned limestone, fantastically buttressed, and between hills which throw out rocky spurs, terminating or thinning down into high limestone walls, re- sembling those of ruinous fortifications. ”

“ 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. Po- tatoes and wheat are grown, but the soil is poor and stony. A little trade, chiefly in dried fish and seaweed, is done with Won-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 Phyong-yang. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Paper and tobacco were the goods that were on the move, bound for Phyong-yang.
Paper is used for a greater variety of purposes in Korea than anywhere else, and its toughness and durability render it in- valuable. 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There in the moonlight a great masculine crowd had collected, and in the middle of it were our juapUy 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 Chhon by his presence, that they lived in peace, and did not want to be " implicated with a foreigner " (all foreigners being Japanese) . ”

“ 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. ”

“ The timid innkeeper was old, and this brought out the fact that when a local migistrate has aged parents, it is customary for him to invite to an enter- tainment 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. ”

“ The country is abso- lutely 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 yaf?ien which only hangs together from force of habit, a Confucian temple, and a Buddhist temple on a height are the only noteworthy buildings. ”

“ 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. ”