Page:Every-day life in Korea (1898).djvu/23

 Crab-holes are much in evidence. Wading-birds utter their sharp cries, and yonder the smoke curls from the rude hut of the salt-refiner. This transformation scene has been wrought by the tide, which rises along these coasts, somewhat as it does in the Bay of Fundy, to an average height of twenty-six feet. On the eastern coast, be it noted in contrast, there is a rise and fall in the tide of a very few feet only. The interior of the country is a perfect checker-board of inountains ; for, in traveling from one end of the land to the other, a person is never out of their sight. The mountains are chiefly composed of gneiss, various schists and granite, which in the lower peaks and hilltops are mostly in a disintegrated form. The soil of mountain and valley is generally yellow in color, but certain of the peaks are black, as are some of the river plains. These picturesque mountains, of every shape and size, are frequently verdureless, with many a furrow cut into their surface by the heavy rainfall of the summer.

Others are covered wholly or in part with pine shrubs or trees, as well as grass and bushes of the magenta-hued azalea. The only snow-capped peaks, to my knowledge, are found in the EverWhite Mountains, upon the northern frontier. A high ridge of mountains traverses the peninsula somewhat close to the eastern coast, forming a watershed with a short slope to the east and a long slope to the west, between it and the partially enveloping sea. From this range lateral