Korea & Her Neighbours/Chapter VI

DURING the five weeks which I spent on the Han, though the routine of daily life varied little, there was no monot- ony. 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 sun- beams 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 coniferae and deciduous trees, among which there are occasionally picturesque clumps of umbrella pines. The Pinus Si?iensis and the Abies Micros - perma abound, and there are two species of oak and three of maple, a Platanus, juniper, ash, mountain ash, birch, hazel, Sophora Japonica, Eiionymus alatus, Thiija Oriefifalis, 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 Euo7iyinus 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, climb- ing 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 plum- age, were not uncommon, and peregrines, kestrels, falcons, and buzzards were occasionally seen. But the song-birds were it"^. 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 alto- gether 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 pre- eminence 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 con- tinually 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 Won-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 of its inhabitants. The Korean tiger, judg- ing 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 Ktir-dong^ with their long match- lock 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, in- dicating 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 con- fined 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 lit- erally without number and are very tame; I constantly saw them feeding among the crops within a few yards of the peas- ants 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 loo // to do it. The season was nearly over, yet I. bought fine pheasants on the Han for three- pence and fourpence each. They were cheaper than chickens. The Han itself, rising in the Diamond Mountain of Kong- w6n-Do, and formed by a number of nearly parallel affluents, next to the border river Am-nok, is ///<? 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 as- cended 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 navi- gation, 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 Yong-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-w6n-Do and Kyong-Kivi Do, and for the north- east portion of Chung-Chong Do; down it all the excess pro- duce of this great region goes to Seoul, and nearly all merchan- dise, salt, and foreign goods come up it from the sea-board, to pass into the hands of the posa?ig, 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 communica- tion 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 Yong-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. ^

The people are of fine physique and generally robust appear- ance. Some of them had evidently attained great age. There were a few sore eyes and some mild skin diseases, both pro- duced by dirt, but there were no sickly-looking people; in- fants 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 daemons. There were two shrines containing 7nirioks, in both cases water-worn boulders chafed into some resemblance to human- ity; spirit shrines on heights; and under large trees heaps of stones sacred to daemons; 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.

' 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 atten- tion to the subject. It must be understood that a Korean household rarely, if ever, consists of a man, wife and children only; there are par- ents and relationly hangers-on, to say nothing of possible servants.

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 fig- ures of warriors, horses, servants, and sheep. ^

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 along- side of it.

The villages from about 50 // 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 // 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.

(1 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.)

The people are peasant farmers in the strictest sense, most of them holding their lands from \\-\t yang-ba7is at their pleas- ure. The proprietor has the right to turn them out after har- vest, 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 trans- actions 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 Yong- 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 ab- solutely require. They appear lazy. I then thought them so, but they live under a regime 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 rapa- cious attentions of the nearest mandarin and his myrmidons, or to a demand for a loan from an adjacent yang-ban. Never- theless, the homesteads of the Han valley have a look of sub- stantial comfort.

Certainly the meals of the men are taken in far greater tidi- ness 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, circu- lar, dark wooden tables, a few inches high, one for each per- son. 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, condi- ments.^ 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 posi- tion, the object of the ambition of every Korean. En-itiim 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. Daemon worship prevails through- out 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.

(These remarks apply to every part of Korea which I afterwards saw.)

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, star- ing apathetically. They were frequently timid, and snatched up their fowls and hid them when we came in sight, but a lit- tle 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 vil- lages, I never met with anything more disagreeable than curi- osity 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 in- deed 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.