Page:A Forbidden Land - Voyages to the Corea (1880).djvu/42

 opinion on the origin and descent of the different races which people the peninsula, as neither Chinese nor Corean sources are able to give a reliable account on this subject, The Coreans' reply to any question is, that they themselves do not know anything about it, and that they have altogether forgotten where they come from. This ignorance is easily accounted for by the deficiencies of their country's literature, which, as regards its own history, is very incomplete. Their physiognomy bears witness to an origin different to that of the Chinese, and has unmistakable traces of a descent from two distinct races. Of a taller and more powerful make than the natives of China and Japan, with a cast of features thoroughly pleasing, and endowed with a firm and energetic character, they remind us much more forcibly of the half-savage hordes and nomadic tribes of Mongolia and northern Asia than of the natives of the two countries just named—making, at the same time, allowance for the softening influence which has prevailed with them, as it must prevail with all races of a semi-barbarous state who, after a roving life of many years, finally settle down and exchange the rough habits of warfare and hunting for the more quiet and peaceful pursuits of agriculture and commerce. In his remarks on the shipwrecked Coreans whom he saw at Nagasakii, Colonel Siebold expresses his opinion on this point in a manner so striking and graphic, that I cannot clothe my own personal observationa in language more suitable to the case in