Korea & Her Neighbours/Chapter XXVI

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 road- side, and wild ducks abounded on every stream. The one really fine view of the day is from the crest of a hill just beyond 0-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 ex- pected, 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 PI. 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 mapit 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 mapiij 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.

All 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 yameii 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 life-blood of the people. We had crossed the Tao-jol, the boundary between the provinces of Kyong-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 Phyong-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 ;£io 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 man- ufactures, in its finer qualities produced in Chul-la Do, is hon- ored 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 cover- ing walls, to the thin, strong film for writing on, and a beau- tiful 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 muz- zles 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, per- simmons 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 re- sembling 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 oc- cupied, 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 after- noon, the pedlars packed up their wares and departed e?i 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 Phyong-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 in- terest 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 im- posing from its fine gateway and the extent of ground it en- closes.

Two days before reaching Phyong-yang we crossed the high- est pass on the road, and by a glen wooded with such decid- uous trees, shrubs, and trailers as ash, elaeagnus, euonymus, horn-beam, 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-dong. 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 // from the sea, at the base of two low fir-crowned hills, which terminate in cliffs above the Nam-chhon.

A battlemented wall 9 // 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 at- tractive view. The Korean sky was at its bluest, and the wind- ing 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 re- duce a flourishing town with an estimated population of 30,000 souls to one of between 5,000 and 6,000, and to destroy what- ever 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 per- haps an inhabited house stood solitary among the deserted or destroyed, emphasizing the desolation. Some of the destruc- tion 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-dong 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 Man- churia.

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 ob- tained 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, daemon shrines, and refresh- ment 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 Phyong-yang officials for 250 years !

The first view of Phyong-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-dong 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 un- clouded 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-dong. The great double- roofed Tai-dong Mon (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-dong with our ponies in a crowded ferry-boat, 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 as- signed 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 Ameri- can 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 re- sembling 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 occu- pation 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 mani- festly posing as a foreign room, gave me a chair, took one him- self, 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 devo- tion 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 Phyong-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 iter- ation without coming to much mutual understanding, and I was glad when the time came for seeing the city and battle- field 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 home- steads, 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.

Phyong-yang was not taken by assault ; there was no actual fighting in the city, both the Chinese who fled and the Japa- nese 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 " woje?i (dwarfs) did not kill Koreans," hence many had re- turned. 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 be- haved well, and all stores obtained in the town and neighbor- hood 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 with- drawal they would suffer much from the Kun-ren-tai, a regi- ment 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 as- sumed 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 erec- tions, well stocked with Japanese goods, and specially with kerosene lamps of every pattern and price, the Defries and Hinckes patents being unblushingly infringed.

Phyong-yang has a truly beautiful situation on the right or north bank of the clear, bright Tai-dong, 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 es- carped 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 undu- lations within the wall and up to the northern pine-clothed summit is entrancing, and the views, even in winter, are ex- quisite— eastwards over a rich plain to the mountains through which the Tai-dong 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 Phyong-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 devas- tations, and the Governor's ymnen, 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-dong, rich in silk, iron, and cotton, while within 10 miles there are at least five coal-mines$1$, and for all produce there is easy com- munication 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-dong in summer. The Peking road, which I had followed thus far, and which for centuries has linked Phyong-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 Gen- eral 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 Phyong-yang, after 2 miles of an undulat- ing 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 Man or Seven Star Gate, after which it trends in a northwesterly direction to the Fotong Mon.

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, pass- ing through the Chil-sung M'on and down the steep zigzag de- scent 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 remov- ing 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 Feng-tien division. Place of death.

And on the other:

Killed while fighting with the Japanese troops at Phyong-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, prob- ably 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 Mon, 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 Phyong-yang was lost and won when the forts were taken. What remained was less of a battle than a mas- sacre. Before the morning, this force, the flower of the Chi- nese army as to drill and equipment, had perished, those who escaped never reappearing as an organized body. It is esti- mated that from 2,000 to 4,000 men were slain, with thou- sands 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, de- scribed 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 ret- ribution 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 Finns 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 civ- ilization, 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 Phyong-yang decided the fate of the campaign.

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 Phyong- 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 dis- mount 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 Phyong-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 court- yards, 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.

$1$There are five coal-mines at distances varying from lO to 30 It from Phyong-yang, those of Yang-tang, 15 H away, producing the best quahty. With rich iron ore close to the river bank at Kai Chhon, about 36 h 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 m 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 Phyong-yang itself, but the minei^l is there in abundance and of good quality, and only awaits capital and en- terprise. 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.)-