Page:Every-day life in Korea (1898).djvu/22

 titles of the King- of Korea is "Lord of the Ten Thousand Islands." These islands are mostly mountainous, many of them sheer rocks, while others are covered with vegetation. The largest of these is Quelpart, the "Botany Bay" of Korea, and probably the best known is "Port Hamilton," at one time an English possession. Along the eastern coast, it is worthy of remark, islands are exceedingly rare. Hon. C. Waeber, the former Russian minister, in his admirable paper on the meteorology of Korea, speaks of the cold Arctic current flowing down the eastern coast of the country; but the southern and western coasts are washed by the same Yellow Sea which laves the shore of northern China, and the waters off these two coasts feel the influence of one of the three branches of the warm Japanese Current, which corresponds to the Gulf Stream flowing in the Atlantic Ocean.

The coast is rather bleak and forbidding, giving but little idea of the fine scenery existing in the interior. Frequent inlets break the coast line, especially on the west and south sides of the country, in the smaller of which at one time of the day may be seen a broad sheet of dancing water, with boats laden with brush and rice, flitting hither and thither; but seen at a later hour, a transformation has taken place and the eye rests on dreary mud-flats, with a junk here and there standing high and dry on the plain, or resting in the channel of a very modest creek.